OCR Computer Science A Level - Data Types

A collection of vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and concepts related to data types in Computer Science.

Primitive data types

Basic types of data that include Integer, Real, Character, String, and Boolean.

Integer

A whole number that can be positive, negative, or zero, without a fractional part.

Real

Numbers that can have a fractional part, which can be positive or negative.

Character

A single symbol used by a computer, including letters, digits, and symbols.

String

A collection of characters used to represent text.

Boolean

A data type that can only hold two values: True and False.

Binary

A base-2 number system used by computers that uses only 0s and 1s.

Hexadecimal

A base-16 number system that uses digits 0-9 and letters A-F to represent values.

Two’s complement

A method for representing negative numbers in binary systems.

Normalisation

The process of adjusting the representation of floating point numbers to maximize precision.

ASCII

A character encoding standard using 7 bits, representing 128 characters.

Unicode

A character encoding standard that supports over 1 million characters using a varying number of bits.

Floating point

A way to represent real numbers in binary that includes a mantissa and an exponent.

Bitwise manipulation

Operations performed on binary numbers at the level of individual bits, including AND, OR, and XOR.

Sign magnitude

A method of representing negative numbers in binary by using a leading bit to indicate the sign.

Shifts

Operations that move all bits in a binary number to the right or left, effectively multiplying or dividing by powers of two.

Character set

A collection of codes that correspond to characters, used for text representation in computing.

Mantissa

The part of a floating point number that contains its significant digits.

Exponent

The part of a floating point number that represents the scale of the number.