Representing Numbers and Letters with Binary: Crash Course Computer Science #4

Today, we’re going to look at how computers use a stream of 1s and 0s to represent all of our data - from our text messages and photos to music and web pages. We’re going to focus on how these binary values are used to represent numbers and letters and discuss how our need to perform operations on more extensive and more complex matters brought us from our 8-bit video games to beautiful Instagram photos, and from unreadable garbled text in our emails to a universal language encoding scheme.

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[kharyrobertson]

Her enthusiasm while taking about unicode is inspiring.

[vlogbrothers]

I find this so compulsively watchable even though it features math. -John

[KathyClysm]

As a software engineer, I cannot help but be amazed at how you managed to break the information down clearly and logically to it's most important components while still being completely excited and in awe of the stuff you are talking about. My old professors and teachers could seriously learn a thing or two from you!

[violetmoon]

This series has made me seriously consider computer science as a possible degree option-Thanks guys/gals of Crashcourse

[rachelalaine]

My brain hurts and my decision to watch 20 of these at 1am is still not regreted

[kasd]

“Of course not everything is a positive number - like my bank account in college.” Oof.

[Stargazerm]

Programmer here who finds this series seriously interesting. It's also nice to see very informed tutor and friendly way she covers subjects "in details". Keep up the good work!

[amber]

She's awesome! The people behind the animations and editing don't get the recognition they deserve either - really high quality stuff :).

[cj-jzfg]

Thank you so much! I'm 23 years old and FINALLY binary system makes sense to me! So pleased!!! Feels like learning a new language in 10 minutes.

[darthsalsapants]

I am a 26 year old trying to get a bachelor's in computer science and this video series really makes computer science sound so simple.

[QualityEJC]

"Of course not everything is a positive number, like my bank account in college." I know that feeling sister.

[srpilha]

Man, so much love for this series. Never has encoding or Unicode been so exciting!

Also, we cannot stress enough how absolutely REVOLUTIONARY it is for both our operations and the objects of our operations to be encoded basically in the same way. The algorithm that encodes your mp3 AND the encoded file itself are written with ones and zeroes. In a digital context, _nothing_ is really sub-symbolic anymore, everything is written.

[morezco]

dude I'm so glad this got out *exactly* when I started my computer eng course

[gluedtogames]

Your obvious enthusiasm for CS is inspiring.

[garrettcasselman]

As soon as she explained how Unicode is used for colors and numbers I paused the screen and was blown away at each individual pixel on my phone, knowing that each individual one was its own line of 64 ones and zeros. When I hit the play button, the true scope of what I'm holding in my hands to type this hit me.

[AubreeGames]

You can tell you’re really passionate about what you’re teaching, and I love that

[amber]

What do you call a family of eight rabbits?

A Rabbyte!

(sorry, I'll leave now...)

[Elif-tiwf]

I came here after my computer engineering class and I've just started to understand what my lecturer was saying. thank youuu

[MegaParix]

this series is simply amazing and unfolded the mystery of what goes inside the machine when we program something.. Thank You so much :)

[kristin.]

I love this course so much!!
Each video I learn a looot & can combine infos that I've seen before.
It's so very well displayed & explained, THANKS Carrie Anne! ;)