Data representation

Number sets and bases, signed and floating point binary, errors and precision, bitwise operations, characters, error checking, images, sound and MIDI, compression, encryption and hashing: the robot's sensor readings, colours, notes and radio messages as bits.

Module A7A level10 lessons

Start in the simulator
  1. A7.1 Number sets, bases and units Natural, integer, rational, irrational, real and ordinal numbers; any number base; bits, bytes, kilo and kibi.
  2. A7.2 Binary arithmetic and signed integers Unsigned addition and multiplication, sign and magnitude, two's complement, subtraction and overflow.
  3. A7.3 Fixed point and floating point Binary fractions, mantissa and exponent, normalisation, and adding floating point numbers.
  4. A7.4 Errors, range and precision Rounding errors, absolute and relative error, range against precision, overflow and underflow, with a real sensor…
  5. A7.5 Bitwise operations and characters Masks with AND, OR and XOR, logical, arithmetic and circular shifts, and characters as codes in ASCII and Unicode.
  6. A7.6 Error checking and correction Parity bits, majority voting, checksums and check digits, with checksums on the robot's radio messages.
  7. A7.7 Analogue, digital and graphics Analogue and digital signals, ADCs and DACs, bitmapped and vector graphics and when to use each.
  8. A7.8 Sound and MIDI Sample rate, sample resolution, the Nyquist theorem and aliasing, and MIDI events played on the robot's piezo.
  9. A7.9 Compression, encryption and hashing Run length and dictionary coding, the Caesar and Vernam ciphers, symmetric and asymmetric encryption, and hashing.
  10. A7.10 Project: a secure sensor packet Pack a distance reading into fixed point bytes with flags and a checksum, encrypt it with a one-time pad and send it…