Units of data
Objectives:
i. Define the terms bit, nibble, byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte
Bit: A bit (short for "binary digit") is the smallest unit of measurement used to quantify
computer data. It contains a single binary value of 0 or 1.
Nibble: In computers and digital technology, is a four binary digits or half of an eightbit byte. A nibble can be conveniently represented by one hexadecimal digit.
Byte: In most computer systems, a byte is a unit of data that is eight binary digits long.
A byte is the unit most computers use to represent a character such as a letter, number,
or typographic symbol (for example, "g", "5", or "?"). A byte can also hold a string of bits
that need to be used in some larger unit for application purposes (for example, the
stream of bits that constitute a visual image for a program that displays images or the
string of bits that constitutes the machine code of a computer program).
Kilobyte: A kilobyte is 103 or 1,000 bytes. The kilobyte (abbreviated "K" or "KB") is the
smallest unit of measurement greater than a byte.
Megabyte: A megabyte is 106 or 1,000,000 bytes. One megabyte (abbreviated "MB") is
equal to 1,000 kilobytes and precedes the gigabyte unit of measurement. While a
megabyte is technically 1,000,000 bytes, megabytes are often used synonymously with
mebibytes, which contain 1,048,576 bytes (220 or 1,024 x 1,024 bytes).
Gigabyte: a measure of storage capacity equal to 2
Terabyte: 2
40(1,099,511,627,776)
30(1024)
bytes.
bytes; 1024 gigabytes.
ii. Understand that data needs to be converted into a binary format to be processed by
a computer.
Why binary?
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Computers can only understand 1s & 0s
They process and store binary numbers
Any other type of data is useless
Data must be translated into binary form before it can be used...
It is digitized