2 - Number Systems

The idea of numbers has been around for thousands of years, and all of us are familiar with numbers to some extent. Everyone deals with numbers in some way or form every day. When we check the weather, buy something, go to the doctor, cook, travel, invest, etc., numbers are needed.  In today’s society the need for numbers is essential, and that is why mathematics is a required component of your education. Numbers help us measure, record, and communicate experiences and information.  Numbers are also useful in determining patterns and trends that exist within the information. This ability to detect patterns is useful because it allows us to predict and forecast future events. For example, information about the weather that has been collected and stored over the years could be used to find trends and patterns that can, in turn, be used to forecast the weather.

Computers are essentially devices that work with numbers. When interacting with the computers of today, they appear to have very little to do with numbers, but this is deceptive because everything in the computer is based on numbers. Graphics, text, sound, video, communication, storage, etc. are all accomplished using numbers. The numbers used in computing are slightly different from the form of numbers that we encounter every day. Though the form of the numbers is slightly different, the concepts are identical, which makes understanding computing and computers a bit easier.