How computers stores information : Deep Dive Part 2 ⚡
- types of data in the real world
- Text
- Numbers
- Video
- Audio
- Image
- We understand now how computers store information in the form of binary digits, but how we map an image or any type of data to a binary digit ?
Number Systems
- humans invented a system to represent quantity of things based on symbols, and these symbols are numerical symbols (0, 1,2,3...). The most common number systems are: Base 10 and Base 2
- In the human world we use base 10 to describe day to day numerical needs, and it's base 10 because we have 10 possible values 0-9 , why only base 10 not 12 or 13 ? most likely because we have 10 fingers ! so we started to count things based on our fingers.
- but in the computer world we don't have 10 possible values. remember , we only have 0s and 1s . So the second most common number system is base 2, which only holds to possible values 0 or 1
- So any type of data, either it's an image , text, number or anything will be converted to binaries , and from binaries we could store that binary, process it, and convert it back to original human readable form whether it's audio or any other types of data
- In this illustration we can see how we represent numbers in both system (Base 10, and base 2)
Text
- a text is just a collection of characters, and representing characters in computers happens in 2 steps
Images
- Images are collection of colors, and representing colors in a computer happens in 2 steps
- A system to map a color to number
- Most common system is RGB
- converting the number to binary digits
- A system to map a color to number
Video
- A Video is a collection of images
Extra resources :
Oldest comments (0)