1. New Mexico Computer Science for All Author: Ed Angel Title: Bits and Bytes

2. Bits and Bytes Ed Angel Professor Emeritus of Computer Science University of New Mexico www.cs.unm.edu/~angel angel@cs.unm.edu

3. Bits and Bytes What is a bit? What is a byte? What do they represent? How do I manipulate them?

4. Model of a Computer Processor Memory Program

5. Focus on Memory Stored as bits: 1’s and 0’s How stored varies ▫Paper tape ▫Punch cards ▫Magnetic core ▫Solid State ▫CDs and DVDs More important is what the bits represent

6. What can we store? Numbers ▫Binary: 101001 ▫Decimal: 12345 ▫Floating point: 123.456 Characters (text) ▫Web pages Colors Programs Data

7. Why we should care We usually need not worry about how quantities are represented at the bit level but there are exceptions ▫Assigning colors in many applications ▫Use of different character sets Basic understanding of how computers work