How Binary Values Are Represented As Data

View this video to learn how binary values are used to represent data.

Once you have completed viewing this video, watch the Conversion Demonstration video below, then move on to Conversion Practice to practice converting decimal values into binary representations. Once you get the hang of it, try out our competitive decimal to binary conversion game called #Converter. Just click the link under the Converter Game heading, read the instructions, and play the game. Once your time is up you can post your score to the #Converter scoreboard and compare your high score with others who have completed the game previously.

You will earn extra credit for posting your score to the scoreboard. One point for each conversion you completed in your highest scoring attempt posted on the scoreboard.

Conversion Demonstration Video

Now that you understand that bits can be used to represent all kinds of data, watch this video to get a better understanding of how to convert decimal values to binary values.

Now that you have seen how to convert decimal values into binary ones start practicing the skill by clicking on the Conversion Practice tab in the menu.

Conversion Practice (Binary Values to Decimal)

In order to learn and improve any skill you need to practice that skill. This Decimal to Binary Conversion Practice Tool will allow you to do just that, practice, practice, practice.

#Converter Game (Can You Be the Highest Scorer?)

Once you have practiced enough to feel confident about using binary sequences to represent decimal values, the next step is to challenge yourself to a competition where you can demonstrate how quickly you can convert given decimal values into their binary equivalent. This #Converter game will allow you to compete against your peers by seeing how many conversions you can complete in 1 minute. Post your results to the Scoreboard to see how you rank amongst you peers.

What is the difference between a bit and a byte

Do you know the difference between a bit and a byte? One bit is one on/off circuit know as a binary digit or bit for short. This is important to know for many reasons. The more bits you have in Internet bandwidth the more data you upload or download over the Internet. The more bits your camera can capture in a single frame the higher the resolution of the image.

The network card in your desktop computer or laptop has a specified number of bits it can transfer per second, whether it is connected to a data communications network by cable or WiFi. In order for data to travel through a data communications network like your home or business local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN) like the Internet, your computing device needs to have a network communication device installed. That device is generally referred to as a network interface card or NIC for short. That NIC connects either by a cable or radio waves, in the case of WiFi, to communicate with a centralized data communication device known as a switch or a router depending on the type of network you are communicating with.

Bluetooth is similar to WiFi in that it also uses radio waves, just a different frequency range than WiFi so as not to cause any interference with Wifi networks. Bluetooth networks are commonly referred to as PANs or personal area network because it has a very short distance range for communicating with their bluetooth receivers. Devices like a computer mouse or keyboard are examples of devices you might use to wirelessly connect to your computer. Or perhaps you use earbuds or other wireless headset types to connect to your desktop or laptop computer or smart phone. If you have ever used a selfie stick, then you are familiar with the process of pairing a bluetooth transmitting device to a receiving device. Amazon's Echo devices, wireless speakers, and many automobile media centers are also capable of using bluetooth for communication.

This process we have been discussing is referred to as data communications. In data communications when you are meaasuring how fast a device is capable of communicating at, we refer to that speed, also known as bandwidth, in bits per second or BPS for short. To represent BPS a lowercase character is used in the speed designation like Kb for kilobits, or Mb for megabits, or Gb for gigabits. When we are referring to storage capacity like that of a memory chip or disc drive, or thumbdrive the value changes to bytes which is a collection of 8 bits. To represent bytes we use a capital letter like KB for kilobytes, MB for megabytes, GB for gigabytes, TB for terrabytes, or even the even larger size of PB for pedabytes. It is important to understand this subtle difference between how data communication device speeds are represented and how the size of a storage device is represented.

International Electromechanical Commission (IEC) Prefixes

One other oddity about these sizes is that originally a kilobit represented 2¹⁰ bit or 1,024 bits in decimal for data communication speeds and a kilobyte was 2¹⁰ bytes or 1,024 bytes decimal. This can cause some issues with the math when keeping track of the actual sizes of things when we go higher to megabits and megabytes, gigabits and megabytes, terrabits and terrabytes, etc. In order to simplify the math a newer system has been developed. This new numbering system is known as the International Elctromechanical Commission (IEC) prefixes. To see the old numbering scheme compared to the new one you can view this IEC table which shows the differences and provides an explanaiton of how the new system works.