Saturday, July 10, 2021
Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Number System
Number system is a set of values used to represent different quantities and other special characters. In other words it is a system of number that deals about the numbers and their representation(such as base and exponents) in different systems.
Number system have been around for thousands of years. The common system is the existing system based on number ten(10). Apart from this number system, there are in use the Arabic system, binary system(base two), ternary system(base three), quaternary system(base four), quinary system(base five), octal system(base eight), decimal system(base ten), due-decimal system(base twelve), hexadecimal system(base sixteen),etc.
All these number system can be used to count the number of students in a class or number of viewers watching a certain TV program etc.
The number systems can be categorized in two categories:
1. Non-Positional Number Systems
2. Positional Number Systems
1. Non-Positional Number Systems
In ancient time, people used to count on their fingers. When these fingers became insufficient for counting then stones, pebbles or sticks were used to signify the values. This method of counting is known as the Non-Positional Number System. It was very difficult to perform arithmetic operation, and it had no symbol for zero. The most common non-positional number system is the Roman Number System. In this number system, only a few characters are used to represent the numbers. The characters that are use in this number system are I,V,X,L(fifty),C(hundred),D(thousand),etc. Furthermore, it is very difficult to perform arithmetic operation, logical operation as well as positional techniques.
2. Positional Number Systems
In positional number system, the value of each digit in a number is defined not only by the system but also by the position of symbol. Positional number system have a base or radix. The first positional number system was invented by the Babylonians. They used a base 60 system. The positional number system, which is being used nowadays is known as the decimal number system. The system is base ten(10) system that contains ten(10) digits 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.
The digital computer represents all kinds of data and information in binary numbers 0 and 1. It includes audio, graphics, video, text and number. Actually to a computer everything is a number. Numbers are numbers, letters are numbers, sound and pictures are also numbers. Even the computer's own instructions are numbers. Computer represents alphabets in ASCII code(American Standard Code for Information Interchange).