1415-IGCSE Computer Science

Decimal and hexadecimal systems

Note that both terms can be used: DENARY or DECIMAL (DENARY is more common).
Moreover, HEX means HEXADECIMAL.
Parity check:
Parity check is always based on 1. Consider the following byte:

1 0 0 1 0 1 1

If the system uses even parity then the parity bit for the byte above needs to be 0 since there is
already an even number of 1s; however, if the system uses odd parity, then the parity bit needs
to be 1 since we must have an odd number of 1s. Our binary number before transmission then
becomes:
parity
bit

either

for even parity

or

for odd parity

At the receiving end, the number of 1s is again totaled and if it isnt even for an even parity
system, then an error has occurred; if it isnt odd for an odd parity system, then again an error
has occurred.
If two bits have been changed after transmission, it is possible for this parity check to fail to find
the error. For example, using the above binary number again, 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 is clearly
incorrect, but the parity still shows up as even and the parity check wouldnt detect an error in
this case.
Now suppose the transmitted data has arrived as follows, where each binary number sent is
shown as row 1 to row 7 together with the parity byte:
parity bit

column 2

column 3

column 4

column 5

column 6

column 7

column 8

row 1

row 2

row 3

row 4

row 5

row 6

row 7

parity byte

It is clear from the above data that row 5 has an incorrect odd parity (five 1s) and column 4 also
has an incorrect odd parity (three 1s). The intersection of row 5 and column 4 gives us the
incorrect bit value (0 in this case). It is therefore possible to change this bit value to 1 and
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