Fluency with Information Technology, 6e (Snyder)
Chapter 7 Representing Information Digitally: Bits and the “Why” of Bytes
7.1 True/False Questions
1) A bit is larger than a byte.
2) The byte is the standard unit for computer memory.
3) A key property of the PandA representation is that it is discrete; that is, the phenomenon is
either present or it is not; the logic is either true or false.
4) Extended ASCII is a 9-bit code.
5) A red, yellow, and green traffic light is a good example of a binary system.
6) A contraction for binary digit, the term bit was originally adopted because early computer
designers interpreted the two patterns as 1 and 0, the digits of the binary number system.
7) The PandA unit is known as a bit.
8) An important property of metadata is that it is intertwined with the information that it
describes.
9) The tag characters included with the content characters of the Oxford English Dictionary
increase the size of the file compared with plain text.
10) The original spelling of byte came about because of a spelling error.
11) Place value representation is associated with decimal numbers (base 10), but it does not
apply to the binary numbers.
12) The 7-bit ASCII codes are part of UTF-8.
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1) This places information in order by using non-digit symbols.
A) Collating Sequence
B) PandA Representation
C) Bytes
D) All of the above
2) The binary number 101 represents the decimal number:
A) 3
B) 5
C) 7
D) 9
3) How many bits does each hex digit require?
A) 2
B) 4
C) 16
D) Hex is not measured in bits.
4) What does ASCII stand for?
A) Algorithmic Sequence of Computer Integrated Information
B) All Standards Complete Initialization Interface
C) Aspiring Students Confused by Incoherent Incantations
D) American Standard Code for Information Interchange
5) The Hawaiian alphabet has 18 symbols. How many bits are needed to represent just these
symbols?
A) 2
B) 4
C) 5
D) 16
6) The original version of ASCII used:
A) 4-bit code
B) 7-bit code
C) 8-bit code
D) 16-bit code
7) Extended ASCII code:
A) was developed in the United States
B) was adopted by IBM as the standard for character representation
C) is now known as ISO-8859-1
D) all of the above
8) This refers to whether a number is even or odd.
A) the place system
B) parity
C) PandA
D) computer memory
9) The NATO broadcast alphabet:
A) encodes all digits using unusual names
B) is very efficient minimizing the amount of memory needed to store each letter
C) encodes letters as words
D) makes it difficult to distinguish between different letters
10) Using even parity, a normal byte, for example, 1010 0011, would:
A) include a ninth bit set to 1
B) include a ninth bit set to 0
C) not make use of a ninth bit
D) use a ninth bit to determine exactly which bit was changed if an error occurred
11) The PandA system:
A) contains gray
B) is formed from 256 letter representations
C) has 10 digits
D) is binary
12) How many digits are there in the hexadecimal system?
A) 2
B) 4
C) 10
D) 16
13) The familiar UPC bar code uses more than the minimum number of bits to code symbols
A) so the code will fill up the required amount of space on the package
B) so the reader can tell whether or not the product is upside down
C) so additional information can be coded
D) to allow for expansion in the future
1) In binary representations, an encoding that switches 0s to 1s, and 1s to 0s, is called ________.
2) An 8-bit sequence on the computer is called a(n) ________.
3) Although ASCII and its variations are widely used, the more complete solution is a
representation, called ________, which uses more than one byte (up to four) to encode about
100,000 symbols.
4) Four bits is called a(n) ________.
5) ________ is information describing the properties of other information.
6) ________ are the most common way to provide metadata.
7) The number of digits is the ________ of the numbering system.
8) ________ refers to whether a number is odd or even.
9) ________ is a property of binary numbers in which the number of 1-bits is even. It can be
used by the hardware to detect that an error has occurred.
10) A coding scheme using 8-bit symbols has ________ possible combinations.
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11) A(n) ________ sequence is an ordering for a set of symbols used to sort them; for example,
alphabetical ordering.
12) _______ is a way of representing Unicode using variable-length codes.