Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
How are data
represented
in a computer
(and who
cares)?
WHEN WE USE computer applications, we interact with the
computer at the user level, normally focusing surprisingly little at
tention on the technology that allows us to accomplish our work at
hand. For example, when browsing the Internet, we likely think
about the topic we are researching and the information on the
screen rather than the servers and networks that make our commu
nication possible. When writing using word processors, we concen
trate on the content we want to convey and consider the applica
tion's role only in such matters as type font, type size, and page
layout. As the user, we work with what we “see”; rarely do we stop
and think about how the computer processes and organizes our
data so that we can see them. Because the machine handles so many
behindthescenes tasks, we can easily ignore the technical details of
how data are represented and stored. We let the machine make the
technical decisions, and our work can progress smoothly. The com
puter's technical decisions about data representation, however, can
affect our work in several ways. It is to our advantage to understand
how the storage of information impacts:
The accuracy of our results
The speed of processing
The range of alphabets available to us
The size of the files we must store
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