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Math · Intermediate

Binary & Information

Everything a computer stores, from photos to this sentence, is made of 0s and 1s. Learn to count in binary, see how text and colours become numbers, measure information in bits like Claude Shannon did, discover codes that fix their own errors, see how computers store negative numbers, and design codes that compress data.

7 lessons~35 min0/7 complete
Start courseHelpful background: Powers & Roots
1

Thinking in Binary

Two digits are enough.

  1. Counting in BinaryPlace value with powers of two
  2. Bits, Bytes & TextHow many patterns?
  3. Hexadecimal & ColourBase 16 and screen pixels
2

Information

Measuring surprise, fixing errors.

  1. Information & EntropyShannon’s measure of surprise
  2. Error-Correcting CodesMessages that fix themselves
3

Clever Encodings

Negative numbers and compression.

  1. Negative NumbersTwo’s complement
  2. Compression CodesShort codes for common symbols

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