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Computer science from A to Z
Z is for Zero
Computer scientist like to joke that there are 10 types of people: those who are not familiar with the binary numeral system and those who are.
Which category do you fall into?
A calculator which adds up the prices of items that a person wishes to buy uses the figures 0 to 9 to produce a result. However, the machine performs calculations with only two digits: 0 and 1. They are represented by two statuses of an electronic component.
The machines therefore count using the base-2 system: zero is represented by 0, one by 1, two by 10, three by 11, and so on, and the calculations on these numbers are understandable to people in category number 10!
We are no longer in the heroic age where programmers were confronted directly with these confusing numerals. Fortunately for us, computers know how to communicate their results in the form of numbers, letters or images that are altogether more comprehensible!
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