UNIT 01 – INTRODUCTION TO PROGRAMMING

LESSON # 1.2
TITLE: THE COMPUTER SYSTEM (DATA AND INFORMATION)

Terminologies
Data – are raw facts and figures
Information – Processed data
Input – Stage in which the collected data is entered and transformed into a format that the computer
can understand.
Process – Stage in which the computer performs actions on the data based on a set of instructions.
Output – Stage in which the processed data is displayed or printed in a format that people can
understand.
Storage – Stage in which the computer stores permanently the information on a particular storage
medium.

Discussion

Data Representation
In the computer, data, instruction and information are represented by the digits of the binary system.
The Binary Number System is a number system that has a base of 2 and uses two unique digits: 0
and 1.
The number system that most people use is the Decimal Number System which has a base of 10 and
uses 10 unique digits: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.
Octal Number System has a base of 8 and uses 8 unique digit: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7.
Hexadecimal Number System has a base of 16 and uses 16 unique digits:
0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F

DECIMAL BINARY OCTAL HEXADECIMAL

0 0 0 0
1 1 1 1
2 10 2 2
3 11 3 3
4 100 4 4
5 101 5 5
6 110 6 6
7 111 7 7
8 1000 10 8
9 1001 11 9
10 1010 12 A
11 1011 13 B
12 1100 14 C
13 1101 15 D
14 1110 16 E
15 1111 17 F
Bits and Bytes
Binary Digits or bit is the smallest unit of data, information, and instruction that the computer can
recognize and store.
A group of 8 bits is called a byte. 1 byte can represent 256 character.

UNIT MEANING NUMBER OF BYTES

KB Kilobyte 1,024
MB Megabyte 1,048,576
GB Gigabyte 1,073,741,824
TB Terabyte 1,099,511,627,776

Coding Schemes
A Character is a unit of information that corresponds to a symbol such as a letter in the alphabet.
Three types of Character: Alphabetic, Numeric and Alphanumeric.
Alphabetic: are letters if the alphabet
Numeric: are the digits 0 to 9and the decimal point
Alphanumeric: punctuation Marks, spaces and other special symbol.

A Coding Scheme is a set of defined patterns of binary digits to represent each character.

Coding Scheme Meaning

American Standard Code for Information
ASCII Interchange. Most commonly used coding by all
computer types.
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange
EBCDIC
Code. Used in IBM mainframe.
Unicode Worldwide Character Standard. Used to
UNICODE represent world writing system including Chinese,
Japanese, and Korean character set.