Untitled Flashcards Set

Simulation - computer representations of real things or situations that vary over time. A simulation is an abstraction designed for a particular purpose.

Undecidable Problem - a problem for which no algorithm can ever be written that will always give a correct true/false decision for every input value. Undecidable problems are a subcategory of unsolvable problems that include only problems that should have a yes/no answer (such as: does my code have a bug?).

Lossy - algorithms are not fully reversible; you can reconstruct only an approximation of the original data.

Lossless - algorithms (such as PNG) are reversible (there is no loss in quality); you can reconstruct the original data.

Analog - analog data have values that change smoothly, unlike digital data which change in discrete intervals. +  Analog means information that is represented by signals that vary continuously (that is, including in-between values).

Bits - a single unit of data that can only have one of two values. We usually represent the two values as 0 (off) and 1 (on).

Bytes - groups of 8 bits

Metadata - data about data. For example, the piece of data may be an image, while the metadata may include the date of creation or the file size of the image.

Overflow Errors - an error that occurs when there is not enough bits to represent the data 

Binary Search - A binary search algorithm starts in the middle of a sorted list and repeatedly eliminates half the list until either the desired value is found or all elements have been eliminated. Binary search saves time by doing a partial traversal of the list.

Linear Search - does a complete traversal of the list.

Heuristic - 

Digital - information that is represented as ones and zeros.

Reasonable Time

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange): a table that outlines a common set of conventions established for converting between binary values and alphanumeric (represents 128 different characters)

alphanumeric: the characters that consist of uppercase and lowercase letters in addition to numerals 0-9.

bit string: a sequence of bits that can be used to represent sets or to manipulate binary data.

mapping: associating each element of a given set with one or more elements of a second set.

data: characters, symbols, or quantities on which operations are performed, stored, and/or transmitted by a computer.

unicode: a binary encoding system that can represent much more of the world's text than ASCII can (represents 65,536 different characters)

digital noise: irrelevant or meaningless data that has found its way into otherwise meaningful code