CMPUT 101

Introduction to Computing

Data representation
 How to use the audio and
the slide animations together
− Please turn up your device speakers and run
the slides in presentation mode
− Click on the play button of the audio icon as
soon as a new slide is up
− The play button of the audio icon will appear
when you wave the mouse over the audio
icon and will look like the following picture:

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 How to use the audio and
the slide animations together
− Slide animations run automatically in a timed sequence
regardless of whether the audio is played or not

− However, the sequence of animations will time well with

the audio explanations if you play the audio immediately
after a new slide is up

− Do not click the mouse and do not press the down

arrow key while the audio is playing, in order not to skip
the sequence of animations timed with the audio

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Objectives
■ To learn:
■ The binary numbering system
■ How data are stored in memory
■ Conversion
■ Binary to decimal
■ Decimal to binary
■ Binary arithmetic
■ Python programming examples

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 Why use binary numbers?

Computers are bistable

Notion of electric current

Two states: 0 or 1

True = 1; False = 0
Internal memory storage in binary

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 Data representation
and storage
How does the computer memory store data?
Different types of data include:
Boolean values
Textual data - characters and strings
Integer and real numbers
Images, video, and audio files

All data types must be converted to binary!

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Computer memory
■ How is the computer memory organized?
■ Memory is organized into bytes
■ Each byte is 8 bits
■ Each bit can store 0 or 1
■ Each byte has a separate address

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Memory storage
■ What’s the largest number that can be
stored into memory?
■ The largest unsigned number that can be
stored into a k-bit machine is 2k – 1
■ The largest unsigned number that can be
stored into a 32-bit machine is 232 – 1

An unsigned number is a positive number

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The decimal numbering system
⮚ Consists of integers 0 – 9
⮚ Easy to use on a daily basis
⮚ Easy to read numbers in decimal
⮚ Not possible to store decimal numbers
in computer memory!
⮚ Integer and real numbers have to be
converted to binary

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The decimal numbering system
■ The number 2569
= 2000 + 500 + 60 + 9
= 2 x 103 + 5 x 102 + 6 x 101 + 9 x 100

⮚ Decimal numbers are base 10

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The binary numbering system
■ The binary sequence 1111
= 1 x 2 3 + 1 x 22 + 1 x 2 1 + 1 x 20
=8+4+2+1
= 15 (in decimal)

⮚ Binary numbers are base 2

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 How to convert from
binary to decimal?
■ We refer to a binary digit as a ‘bit’

■ Starting from the right hand-side

■ We multiply each binary bit by 2 and raise the 2
to x, where x is the exponent corresponding to
the position of the bit in the binary sequence
(Note, the first position on the right is 0)
■ We then add up all the terms resulting from the
multiplication of each bit by 2x
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Binary to decimal conversion
examples
■ The number 1000
= 1 x 2 3 + 0 x 22 + 0 x 2 1 + 0 x 20
= 8 (in decimal)

■ The number 10101

= 1 x 2 4 + 0 x 2 3 + 1 x 2 2 + 0 x 2 1 + 1 x 20
= 16 + 0 + 4 + 0 + 1
= 21 (in decimal)
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How to convert from
decimal to binary?
■ We repetitively divide the number in
decimal by 2 until the result of the
division is 0
■ We save the remainder of each round
of the divisions
(Note, the remainder can be either 0 or 1)
■ The binary number is the sequence of
remainders from the divisions by 2
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Conversion from
decimal to binary
■ Example: What’s 19 in decimal?
Remainder

19 2 1 19 in decimal is
10011 in binary
9 1
4 0
2 0
1
0 1
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Verifying the result
■ Let’s convert 10011 back to decimal:
= 1 x 2 4 + 0 x 23 + 0 x 22 + 1 x 2 1 + 1 x 20
= 16 + 0 + 0 + 2 + 1
= 19 (in decimal)

⮚ We now verified that 10011 in binary

equals 19 in decimal

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Binary arithmetic
■ In binary:
1 + 1 = 10 (2 in decimal)
1 + 1 + 1 = 11 (3 in decimal)

Example:
What’s 110 + 101?

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 Binary addition

1 carry

1 1 0
+
1 0 1

10 1 1

For practice, convert each number to decimal and verify the result.
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Binary multiplication

1 1 0 =4+2=6
x
1 1 1 =4+2+1=7
1 1 1
1 1 0
+ 1100
1 1 0 0 0
10 1 01 0 = 32 + 8 + 2 = 42
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Converting data to binary
✔Integers in decimal to binary
⮚ Real numbers (fractional)
⮚ Negative numbers
⮚ Booleans
⮚ Strings
⮚ Images

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Numbers representation
■ Real numbers are normalized so the most
significant bit is after the decimal point
■ Example: .10111 x 23

■ Negative numbers require Two’s complement

operation to represent signed numbers
■ Example: -1 in decimal equals 111 in two’s
complement representation

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Booleans representation
Booleans = {True, False}

True = 1
False = 0

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Converting data to binary
✔Integers in decimal to binary
✔ Real numbers (fractional)
✔ Negative numbers
✔ Booleans
⮚ Strings
⮚ Images

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 Strings representation
■ Strings are encoded character by
character using two schemes

■ English strings are encoded using ASCII (

American Standard Code for Information Interchange)

■ Foreign language strings are encoded using

the UNICODE (Unicode Consortium)

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Each English character corresponds to an ASCII code
that can be converted to binary and stored in memory.

For example, the string “Hello” is encoded as follow:

H = 72
e = 101
l = 108
l = 108
o = 111

Each code is then converted to binary and stored.

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ASCII characters
■ Characters include:
■ Small and capital alphabetical letters
■ Punctuation and special characters
■ Digits 0 – 9 in the decimal system
■ Each character occupies one byte in memory
■ one byte = 8 bits
■ There are 256 codes in the ASCII table
■ That is, 28 = 256

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Section of the Unicode Table

Each foreign character corresponds to a code in the

Unicode table and can be converted to binary then
stored into the computer memory.

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Unicode characters
■ Characters include:
■ The English and European alphabets
■ Symbols from languages around the world
■ Punctuation, emoji, and special characters
■ Digits 0 – 9 in English and in Arabic
■ Each character occupies two bytes in memory
■ Two bytes = 16 bits
■ There are 65,536 codes in the Unicode table
■ That is, 216 = 65,536
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Images representation
■ Images are made of thousands of pixels

■ The more pixels, the higher the resolution

■ Each pixel is represented with three numbers

called color intensities, in RGB

■ The color intensities are converted to binary

and stored into memory
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Images representation
■ RGB color model
(stands for Red/Green/Blue)

Examples:
Black = (0 0 0)
White = (255 255 255)
Gray = (127 127 127)
Red = (255 0 0)
Green = (0 255 0)
Blue = (0 0 255) … etc.
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Converting data to binary
✔Integers in decimal to binary
✔ Real numbers (fractional)
✔ Negative numbers
✔ Booleans
✔ Strings
✔ Images

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Programming practice
■ Write a program that reads a number in
decimal and converts it to binary.
quotient = int(input("Enter a number: "))
while quotient > 0: # quotient is the decimal number

remainder = quotient % 2
print(remainder)
quotient = quotient // 2

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Summary
■ All data types that we work with on a
daily basis are stored in the computer
memory in a binary numbering format
■ Different data types use different
encoding schemes
■ Codes (in decimal or hexadecimal) are
then converted to binary sequences

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