Week 10

Term Test "10"

A little binary notation.

I've never really gone in depth with binary notation before the past week so it was interesting just to see how basic arithmetic was performed and the idea of "base 2" instead of the canonical "base 10".  Here's a fun little game I found that really cemented my understanding of binary representation of the base 10 numbers we are most familiar with.

Cisco Binary Game

Besides that, I had wondered why the binary system was chosen for computers, and I learned that (in simple terms) there's either an electrical current (on) or there is not (off) and they are represented by "1" and "0" respectively - known as bits (or binary digits).  Currently it's not possible to have a base 10 computer system because the computer would have to have 10 different states, besides just "on" and "off".  Thus, the things that are displayed on a computer that are familiar to us are simply represented using the binary system.

For the second term test, my primary worry heading in was any technical knowledge regarding computer hardware since those types of questions were present in previous tests.  Luckily for me, the test was heavily programming-based with a little binary notation and arithmetic of which I was comfortable with.  The most challenging part of the test was the last question, where we were asked to write the definition for what turned out to be a recursive program.  It took awhile to wrap my head around the combination of functions involved.  I had to "test" the definition by running a few "check-expects" in my head and seeing if they matched the results that were given, and then made any adjustments necessary. In the end I think I was able to get it right.

That was about it for this week.

Looking forward to...

- new programming functions
- Programming Project II
- beating the game 2048 - or 100000000000 in binary