Monday, October 8, 2012

Bit

Like many, I am a frequent internet/computer user. However, I am a complete amateur in computer science. The simplest things seem to have bogged me down from the start and this simple thing I'm referring to is bits. Yes, bits.

I could not understand why 1+1=0 and then there was this whole 'carry 1' issue...
So after the lecture, I went home and searched how to add bits. Only after reading a few links and watching some YouTube videos (you see, I'm a visual learner), I was able to sort of get the hang of adding with bits. I looked back at my notes that I took from class, and what the professor did in class wasn't so confusing anymore. I only understood it completely after I've done several practice problems on my own without having to peak at the answer.

So now I have realized that bit is indeed a simple thing.

P.S. I am very glad I managed to understand bits before the next lecture came around because I would have been thoroughly confused when multiplication, adding negative numbers and fractions came about.

Edit: Here are some of the links I've used that were helpful:

http://academic.evergreen.edu/projects/biophysics/technotes/misc/bin_math.htm#addThis also helped me understood more on how to convert bit numbers to real numbers (that we use daily) as well as how to add them

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFd5bnDdB3Q
The first minute of this video explained (really simply) on how to add bits

2 comments:

  1. Nice post. Do you have links to those videos you'd like to share?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes. I've just edited my posts with the links that were useful.

    ReplyDelete