Data Representation

Question 1

What is Data

Answer 1

Information like facts, numbers, audio and video and instructions.

Question 2

How are numbers represented in a computer?

Answer 2

Numbers are represented using binary (0s and 1s).

Question 3

How are images stored in a computer?

Answer 3

Images are stored as grids of pixels, with each pixel representing color values.

Question 4

How is audio represented in a computer?

Answer 4

Audio is stored as digital samples of sound waves.

Question 5

How is video represented in a computer?

Answer 5

Video is stored as a sequence of images (frames) with associated audio tracks.

Question 6

Why is it important to understand how computers represent data internally?

Answer 6

It helps with data management, storage, and transmission.

Question 7

What determines how data like music or video is handled on a computer?

Answer 7

It depends on the software (e.g., music software vs. video software) and file type (mp3 and mp4 diffs because of how data is encoded and compressed)

Question 8

What is a transceiver in computing?

Answer 8

A transceiver allows a computer to send, receive, and understand data—often using binary.

Question 9

Where is binary used in media data processing?

Answer 9

Binary is used in internal data representation (chaning data into binary to be more readable) and software interpretation (being able to read binary).

Question 10

How is media (like audio and video) converted into digital format?

Answer 10

Through two processes:

Sampling: You take measurements of a continuous signal at regular time intervals. If yuo sample 44 100 times per second, you measure sound wave 44 100 times every second

Quantization: You take each measurement and round it to the nearest available digital value.

Question 11

What do sampling and quantization help create?

Answer 11

Digital files that can be stored and processed by a computer.

Question 12

What is the role of software in handling media data?

Answer 12

Software interprets internally represented binary data to make it usable (e.g., playing music or video).

Question 13

How are characters (letters, symbols) represented in a computer?

Answer 13

Using ASCII or Unicode, where each character is assigned a unique binary code.

Question 14

How are whole numbers (integers) represented in a computer?

Answer 14

As pure binary codes. Example: The number 7 is represented as 0111 in binary.

Question 15

What standard is used to represent fractions and decimal numbers in computers?

Answer 15

The IEEE 754 standard.

Question 16

What is a floating-point number?

Answer 16

A way of representing real numbers (including fractions and very large/small numbers) using the IEEE 754 format.

Question 17

What are the three main parts of a floating-point number?

Answer 17

Sign bit: Indicates positive or negative (+ or –)
Exponent: Determines the scale (how big or small)
Mantissa (significand): Represents the actual number

Question 18

What does the sign bit in a floating-point number indicate?

Answer 18

Whether the number is positive or negative.

Question 19

What does the exponent in a floating-point number do?

Answer 19

It scales the number (makes it bigger or smaller).

Question 20

What is the mantissa (or significand) in a floating-point number?

Answer 20

The actual digits of the number being represented.

Question 21

What was the communication issue before ASCII was developed?

Answer 21

Computers could not communicate with each other due to the use of many different character sets.

Question 22

What organization played a key role before ASCII was developed?

Answer 22

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

Question 23

Who contributed to the development of ASCII?

Answer 23

The X3 committee (under the American Standards Association)
Bob Bemer (from IBM – International Business Machines Corporation)

Question 24

What major event happened in 1968 related to ASCII?

Answer 24

The U.S. president recognized ASCII as the federal standard computer language.

Question 25

What does ASCII stand for?

Answer 25

American Standard Code for Information Interchange (often simplified as "Information Exchange").

Question 26

What is ASCII used for?

Answer 26

ASCII assigns binary codes to letters, numerals, and various characters so computers can process and exchange text.

Question 27

How many characters are in the standard ASCII set?

Answer 27

128 characters, mostly Western-oriented.

Question 28

What types of characters are included in ASCII?

Answer 28

Letters (A–Z, a–z), numerals (0–9), punctuation, and control characters.

Question 29

Does ASCII have any extensions?

Answer 29

Yes. These are the types: 1. Extended ASCII (8-bit) 2. Unicode (Char 0-255): Vendor specific extensions 3. ISO/IEC 8859 Series (Char 0-255): Langauge specific 4. Unicode (UTF-8) (0-1 114 111)

Question 30

What does the ascii() function do in Python?

Answer 30

ascii() in Python shows a version of text where any special or non-English characters are replaced with codes so that the whole thing uses only plain English (ASCII) characters.

Question 31

What does the ord() function do?

Answer 31

Converts a character to its ASCII or Unicode numeric code point.

Question 32

What does the chr() function do?

Answer 32

Converts a numeric code point to its corresponding character. Reverse of ord()

Question 33

How can you print all printable ASCII characters in Python?

Answer 33

for i in range(32, 127): print(f"{i}: {chr(i)}")

Question 34

What is Unicode?

Answer 34

Unicode is a universal system that assigns a unique number to every character and symbol used in all languages and scripts worldwide.

Question 35

Is Unicode a programming language?

Answer 35

No, Unicode is not a programming language—it's a character encoding system used by programming languages.

Question 36

What is a Unicode code point?

Answer 36

A code point is a unique number assigned to each character in Unicode

Question 37

What is a grapheme in Unicode?

Answer 37

A grapheme is a single unit of a writing system, such as a letter, emoji, or symbol. It may be made up of one or more Unicode code points.

Question 38

How can you find the Unicode code point of a character in Python?

Answer 38

Use the ord() function.

Question 39

How can you get a character from a Unicode code point in Python?

Answer 39

Use the chr() function.

Question 40

What is binary?

Answer 40

Binary is a numbering scheme where each digit has only two possible values: 0 or 1.

Question 41

Why is binary important in computing?

Answer 41

Binary is the foundation of all binary code used in computing systems.

Question 42

What do the digits in binary represent?

Answer 42

Each binary digit (bit) represents an on (1) or off (0) state, which computers use to process data.

Question 43

Is binary used only in computers?

Answer 43

No, binary is also used to represent electrical states and control transistors.

Question 44

What is the connection between binary and electricity?

Answer 44

Binary can represent electrical signals, where 1 = on (voltage) and 0 = off (no voltage).

Question 45

When was binary first introduced in computers?

Answer 45

Binary was first introduced in early computers during the 1940s.

Question 46

When did the base-2 (binary) system become a computing standard?

Answer 46

In the 1970s, with the rise of the 8-bit microprocessor.

Question 47

What major technology helped standardize the use of binary?

Answer 47

The 8-bit microprocessor.

Question 48

Why is the binary system important today?

Answer 48

Billions of devices rely on binary for computers and digital systems to function.

Question 49

What kind of systems depend on the binary (base-2) system?

Answer 49

Computers, electronics, digital communication, and nearly all modern devices.

Question 50

What is decimal to binary conversion?

Answer 50

t's the process of converting a number from base-10 (decimal) to base-2 (binary).

Question 51

What is a hexadecimal?

Answer 51

Base 16 system. It is used to represent large numbers with small digits.

Question 52

What is the base-16 number system also called?

Answer 52

The hexadecimal system.

Question 53

Why was the hexadecimal system developed?

Answer 53

To simplify binary coding used in computers.

Question 54

Who commonly uses hexadecimal to represent binary values?

Answer 54

Engineers

Question 55

When did hexadecimal use become prominent?

Answer 55

In the 1960s, as computing evolved.

Question 56

In which fields did hexadecimal become especially useful?

Answer 56

Programming and digital electronics.

Question 57

Why are different data representations important in computer systems? Examples?

Answer 57

For optimizing storage, efficient transmission, and ensuring compatibility across platforms and languages. Storage Optimization Efficient encoding reduces the amount of space needed to store data. For example, using binary or hexadecimal allows compact storage of large values. Efficient Transmission Data needs to be transmitted quickly and reliably over networks. Using standard encodings ensures that data can be compressed and sent faster. Cross-Platform Compatibility Data formats like Unicode help ensure that text is displayed correctly on all systems, regardless of language or operating system. International Communication Standards Unicode and other encoding standards allow communication and software to support global languages and characters, making technology accessible worldwide.