Lab 01 - Digital Information

Make a copy of this document for your work (File-> Make a Copy). Type your answers into the boxes
below each question; they will expand as you type. When you are done, download your document as a
PDF (File -> Download -> PDF) and submit it to the Lab 01 Assignment in D2L. Solutions will be posted
the day after the lab is due and only for students who submit work. Check your answers - learning to
self-assess is super important and will help you become a better computer scientist!

1. Convert the following decimal numbers to 8-bit binary numbers: Your answers must have 8 bits.
You must get all of them correct for full credit for this question.

Decimal Binary

15 0000 1111

36 0010 0100

27 0001 1011

100 0110 0100

20 0001 0100

2. Convert the following binary numbers to decimal numbers: You must get all of them correct for full
credit for this question.

Binary Decimal

1111 1101 253

0000 1100 12

1111 0000 240

1111 1111 255

0000 0111 7

3. Fill out the table below using 8 bits, then answer the question below the table.

Binary Decimal Binary Decimal

0000 0100 4 0000 0111 7

0001 1100 28 0001 1011 27
 0010 0000 32 0100 0101 69
0000 1110 14 0010 1011 43
1001 0000 144 0111 1001 121
There is a simple pattern for determining if a binary number is even. What is it and why does this
pattern occur? Answer your question in the box below, with the help of the tables in questions 1-3.

A simple pattern that can be used to determine if a binary number is even is the very first place
value, which represents 1, since 1 is an odd number. If the binary number is 00101100, which
translate to decimal as 44, then it’s an even binary number, but if you turn on the 1 on the first
place value, which is 00101101, then the binary number is odd, since it translates to the odd
decimal number 45.

4. How many bits would you need if you wanted to have the ability to count up to 500? Hint: Refer to
Unit 01, Lesson 3, and see how many values we can have with 3 place values and 2 symbols. Refer
to the video in Unit 01, Lesson 4 under the topic Revisit circles and squares. Then use your flippy do
and figure out how many bits you need to count up to 500.

You need a total of 9 bits in order to count up to 500

5. How high could you count in binary if you used 10 of your fingers as bits and had 9 fingers up and 1
finger down? (finger up means 1, finger down means 0). Hint: Refer to the video in Unit 01, Lesson 4
under the topic Revisit circles and squares. Then use your flippy do and figure out the largest
number you can have with 9 bits.

With all 10 fingers up I can count up to the maximum of 1023. However, in this scenario, with one
finger down, all 9 of my fingers that are up can count to the maximum of 511

6. How many different numbers can 1 bit represent? (1 bit means 1 place value. Follow the same hint
as in the previous question).

Two bits, which is 0 and 1

7. How many different numbers can 5 bits represent? (5 bit means 5 place values. Follow the same hint
as in the previous question).

5 bits can represent 32 different numbers

8. What is the “largest” number 8 bits can represent? Hint: Refer to the video in Unit 01, Lesson 4
under the topic Revisit circles and squares. Then use your flippy do and figure out the largest
number you can have with 8 bits.

The largest number that 8 bits can represent is 255.

9. What about n (n represents any number) bits? Can you find a pattern? How many different numbers
can n bits represent? Hint: Come up with a general formula for this. The answer is not Infinite or
anything ambiguous. You should have done some similar questions in the quiz preceding this lab.

1 bit can represent 2 numbers, 2 bits can represent 4 numbers, 3 bits can represent 8 numbers, 4
bits can represent 16 numbers, 5 bits can represent 32 numbers, 6 bits is 64, 7 bits is 128, 8 bits is
256 and so on. Every addition of 1 bit doubles the number of different numbers from the previous
amount of bits.

10. The original ASCII character set required only 7 bits to represent a North American keyboard’s
characters, numbers, and symbols. Assuming all 128 patterns of 7 bits are already defined:

a. How many bits (in total) would be needed to represent those patterns plus approximately 75
Western European characters?

To represent the 128 patterns plus 75 of those characters, which is equal to a total of 203, we
need a total of 8 bits.

b. What is the maximum number of unique characters that could be represented in that many
bits?

The maximum number of unique characters represented in the total of 8 bits would be 256
characters, a bit more than the required amount of characters

**You must answer both questions correctly to receive full credit.

11. Suppose we wanted to represent the original 128 ASCII characters plus 128 extended characters,
plus approximately 17000 characters in Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Bopomofo, Cyrillic, Devanagari,
Georgian, Greek and Coptic, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Hangul, Hebrew, Hiragana, Kannada, Katakana,
Lao, Latin, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, and Tibetan, plus approximately 52,000 CJK
(Chinese, Japanese, Korean) ideographs.

a. What is the minimum number of bits needed to represent these characters?

(128*2) + (17000*24) + (52,000*3) = 564256

2^20 = 1048576
The minimum number of bits required to represent this amount of characters is 20 bits

b. What is the maximum number of unique characters that could be defined using that number of
bits?

1048576
 **You must answer both questions correctly to receive full credit.

12. Log into the Pixelation Widget and make your own image of any size.
○ Encode an image of anything you like.
○ Do not simply make an abstract pattern, like a checkerboard. Instead, it should depict
something, perhaps your name written out, an icon or logo of some sort.

Paste a copy of your image into the box below:

13. What are the largest dimensions (width and height) of an image we can make with the pixelation
widget? Use the Pixelation Widget. What limits the dimensions to this size?

The largest dimension of an image we can make with the widget is 255 by 255. The bytes limit the
dimensions to this size.

14. Refer to the article Washington Post - Fortnite Stealing Dance Moves - What was digitized? What
did players need to do to access the digitized content? (Must have clear answers for both questions
- at least 3 to 4 sentences.)
 A dance called "Milly Rock" from the titular rap music video by 2 Milly was digitized into Fortnite
by Epic Games, in which the dance in the game was called "Swipe It" To Access the dance, players
need to go into the game and purchase the dance using in-game money called “V-Bucks”.

15. Refer to the article in Question 14 - Is someone benefiting from this situation? Is someone being
harmed in this situation? If so, who? (Must have clear answers for both questions).

The person, or company, who’s benefiting from this situation is Epic Games, who not only made
the dance more recognizable for players but also makes money because players can purchase the
dance in the game using V-Bucks, and if they don’t have enough V-Bucks then they can purchase
more of them using real money, and that’s how Epic makes money from this. The person being
harmed from this situation is the original artist 2 Milly, whose lawyer, according to the
Washington Post article, says that it copied the dance frame-by-frame from the original video and
put it into the game’s avatar.