Review of Number Systems

Review of Number Systems

• Number system is a basis for counting various items.

• The decimal number system has 10 digits : 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.

• Modern computers communicate and operate with binary numbers which use only the digits 0 and 1.

• When decimal quantities are represented in the binary form, they take more digits.

• For large decimal numbers people have to deal with very large binary strings and therefore, they do not like working with binary numbers. This fact gave rise to three new number systems : Octal, Hexadecimal and Binary Coded Decimal (BCD).

Review Questions

1. Explain various number systems.

2. Name the number system used in computers.