Lecture Notes: Basics of Computers and Binary Systems

Speakers

• Lamor Free: Engineer at Adafruit Industries, designs circuits for fashion, music, and technology.
• Federico Gomez-Suarez: Software developer at Microsoft Hack for Good, focuses on technology for solving social problems.

Introduction to Binary and Computers

• Computers operate on binary, representing data with ones and zeros.
• Binary may seem complex, but users typically don't interact directly with it.
• Inside a computer:
  • Electric wires and circuits carry information.
  • Information is represented using electricity (on or off states).

Basics of Binary Data Representation

• Bit: Smallest piece of information, can be on (1) or off (0).
• Multiple wires (bits) represent complex information.

Binary Number System vs. Decimal System

• Decimal (base 10): Digits 0-9.
• Binary (base 2): Digits 0 and 1.
  • Counting in binary involves multiplying by 2 for each position (1's, 2's, 4's, 8's, etc.).
  • Example: 9 in binary is 1001 (8+0+0+1).
• Computers handle binary calculations, translating human-readable numbers to binary.

Data Representation Beyond Numbers

• Text: Letters assigned numbers (e.g., A=1, B=2).
• Images: Made of pixels, each pixel represented by a number for its color.
  • Images consist of millions of pixels, with videos showing 30 images per second (large data volume).
• Sound: Vibrations represented as waveforms, with each point on the waveform as a number.
  • Higher quality sound involves more bits (e.g., 32-bit vs. 8-bit audio).

Practical Implications

• Writing code or making apps involves handling images, sound, video, etc., rather than binary directly.
• Understanding binary is essential for grasping how computers process and store information.

Conclusion

• Ones and zeros, or electrical signals, form the core of how computers operate, input, store, process, and output information.