3.2 Representing Numeric Data
Numeric values are the most prevalent type of data used in a computer system. Unlike with other types of data, there may seem to be no need to come up with a clever mapping between binary codes and numeric data. Because binary is a number system, a natural relationship exists between the numeric data and the binary values that we store to represent them. This is true, in general, for positive integer data. The basic issues regarding integer conversions were covered in Chapter 2 in the general discussion of the binary system and its equivalence to other bases. However, we have other issues regarding the representation of numeric data to consider at this point. Integers are just the beginning in terms of numeric ...
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