Fundamentals of Data Representation

5

what is a natural number

a positive whole number, including zero

what is a rational number

can be expressed as a fraction or ratio of integers

what letter represents rational numbers

Q

what is a real number

a value that represents any quantity along an infinite number line

what letter represents integers

Z

what is an ordinal number

it describes the numerical position of an object

what is a cardinal number

it identifies the size of a list

what is a well-ordered set

a group of related elements with a defined order

what is an array

a finite set of related elements of the same data type, where each element id individually indexed

what is a bit (b)

a fundamental unit of information that can only take two values, which can be represented on computers using high or low currents

number of values that can be represented using n bits

2^n

why is hexadecimal useful

useful as a shorthand representation for binary because it is easier to read and the most compact

how many bytes is a kibibyte

1024

how many bytes is a kilobyte

1000

what is floating point comparable to

scientific notation

what does a floating point binary number consist of

mantissa and exponent

what does a normalised positive number start with

0.1

what does a normalised negative number start with

1.0

why is normalisation important

consistency and accuracy

what is the absolute error

the amount by which a value is inaccurate

what is the formula for absolute error

actual value - given value

what is the relative error

measure of uncertainty in a given value compared to the actual value, which is relative to the size of the given value

what is the formula for relative error

absolute error / actual value

when does underflow occur

when there are not enough bits to represent very small numbers

when does overflow occur

when a number is to large to be represented with the available bits