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A binary number is a number expressed in the base-2 numeral system or binary numeral system, a method for representing numbers that uses only two symbols for the natural numbers: typically "0" and "1" . A binary number may also refer to a rational number that has a finite representation in the binary numeral system, that is, the quotient of an ...
A discrete variable that can take only one state contains zero information, and 2 is the next natural number after 1. That is why the bit, a variable with only two possible values, is a standard primary unit of information. A collection of n bits may have 2 n states: see binary number for details.
The modern binary number system, the basis for binary code, is an invention by Gottfried Leibniz in 1689 and appears in his article Explication de l'Arithmétique Binaire (English: Explanation of the Binary Arithmetic) which uses only the characters 1 and 0, and some remarks on its usefulness. Leibniz's system uses 0 and 1, like the modern ...
Computer engineers often need to write out binary quantities, but in practice writing out a binary number such as 1001001101010001 is tedious and prone to errors. Therefore, binary quantities are written in a base-8, or "octal", or, much more commonly, a base-16, "hexadecimal" (hex), number format. In the decimal system, there are 10 digits, 0 ...
The C language provides basic arithmetic types, such as integer and real number types, and syntax to build array and compound types. Headers for the C standard library , to be used via include directives , contain definitions of support types, that have additional properties, such as providing storage with an exact size, independent of the ...
Since each binary memory element, such as a flip-flop, has only two possible states, one or zero, and there is a finite number of memory elements, a digital circuit has only a certain finite number of possible states. If N is the number of binary memory elements in the circuit, the maximum number of states a circuit can have is 2 N.
In programming languages such as C, a bitwise operation operates on binary strings as though they are vectors of bits, rather than interpreting them as binary numbers. Data transfer rates are usually measured in decimal SI multiples. For example, a channel capacity may be specified as 8 kbit/s = 8 kb/s = 1 kB/s.
Digital data is data that is represented using the binary number system of ones (1) and zeros (0), instead of analog representation. In modern (post-1960) computer systems, all data is digital. Data exists in three states: data at rest, data in transit and data in use. Data within a computer, in most cases, moves as parallel data.