Ch 2: Data Measurement and Encoding

Question 1

Which data measurement unit do most computers programs work with?

Answer 1

Most computer programs work with bytes rather than bits

Question 2

Which data measurement unit are computer memory and disk storage capacities measured in?

Answer 2

Computer memory and disk storage capacities are measured in bytes

Question 3

How many bytes are in a kilobyte?

Answer 3

A kilobyte is approximately 1000 bytes

Question 4

How many bytes do today’s systems work with at once?

Answer 4

Today’s systems work with bytes by the millions and billions

Question 5

How many bytes are in one megabyte?

Answer 5

one million bytes

Question 6

How many bytes are in one gigabyte?

Answer 6

one billion bytes

Question 7

Which data units are data transfer rates measured in?

Answer 7

bits
Ex. 8 Mbps

Question 8

What is the data unit “bit” abbreviated with?

Answer 8

A lowercase b

Question 9

What is the data unit “byte” abbreviated with?

Answer 9

An uppercase B

Question 10

What is the approximate number of bytes in a terabyte?

Answer 10

1 trillion

Question 11

What is the approximate number of bytes in a petabyte?

Answer 11

1 quadrillion

Question 12

What is the approximate number of bytes in a exabyte?

Answer 12

1 quintillion

Question 13

What is the approximate number of bytes in a zettabyte?

Answer 13

1 sextillion

Question 14

What is the approximate number of bytes in a yottabyte?

Answer 14

1 septillion

Question 15

What is the abbreviation for kilobit?

Answer 15

Kb

Question 16

What is the abbreviation for megabit?

Answer 16

Mb

Question 17

What is the abbreviation for gigabit?

Answer 17

Gb

Question 18

What is the abbreviation for terabit?

Answer 18

Tb

Question 19

What is the abbreviation for megabyte?

Answer 19

MB

Question 20

Which units are frequencies measured in?

Answer 20

hertz (Hz)

Question 21

How many cycles per second are equivalent to 1 hertz?

Answer 21

One cycle per second

Question 22

How many cycles per second are equivalent to 1 megahertz (MHz)?

Answer 22

one million cycles per second

Question 23

How many cycles per second are equivalent to 1 gigahertz (GHz)?

Answer 23

one billion cycles per second

Question 24

What is the term hertz commonly used to describe?

Answer 24

the radio frequency at which Wireless networking operates, Ex. 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz

It is also used to describe the operational speed of a processor chip, Ex. a 3 GHz CPU can process 3 billion data operations per second.

Question 25

What is an encoding scheme?

Answer 25

A system of binary codes

Question 26

What is the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) ?

Answer 26

An encoding scheme used by early personal computers which assigns a unique 8 bit binary code to each number and letter in the English language, plus many of the most common symbols such as punctuation and currency marks ASCII proved too limited because it couldn't deal with languages such as Chinese, which has which have a more complicated alphabet than English To provide more characters, Unicode was developed

Question 27

How does Unicode work?

Answer 27

Unicode uses 2 bytes, 16 bits per character and can represent up to 65,536 characters

Question 28

Is ASCII coded data compatible with Unicode based operating systems?

Answer 28

Yes, the first 256 codes are the same in both ASCII and Unicode, so existing ASCII coded data is compatible with Unicode based operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Mac operating systems