In every day life we work with Numbers. Numbers are different types and most of us know integer and real numbers. There are different types of Numbers. In this Article, I will explain Numeric types and their representation.
There are different numeric types; mainly we use Integers, Floating point numbers and Complex numbers.
Integers
Integers are whole numbers whose can have positive, negative or zero values. Integers do not have a fractional part. For example, -5, , -123, +10, 5978 and 0 (zero) are integers.
We represent integers in their base system. Commonly we use base 10 system to represent the numbers. We use 0 to 9 digits to represent the numbers. For example, 1, 2, 3, 45, -74509, 0, 8975… etc, are the numbers representation using base 10 system.
Computers can understand only 1’s and 0’s; hence we use base 2 system in computers. To represent 2 in base 2 system, we write it as 10; 90 as 1011010; and 3 as 11 etc., These are called binary numbers.
We also use base 16 system representing hexadecimal numbers. These numbers have A to F alphabets to represent the values 10 to 15. For example, we write 10 as A; 90 as 5A etc,. in hexadecimal representation.
Another system we use representing the numbers is base 8 system. And the numbers we call octal numbers. Octal numbers have the digits 0 to 7. To represent 8, we write it as 11 in octal; 90 as 132 etc,.
Floating point numbers
Floating point numbers are also called as real numbers have the fractional part. These numbers contains two parts; one part which is before the decimal is called integer part and after the decimal is called fractional part. Examples of floating point numbers are; 2.3, -3.5, etc,.
Complex numbers
Complex numbers are the numbers in the form “x + iy“. Where “x” and “y” are real numbers and “i” is the imaginary number. These numbers contains real and imaginary parts. In “x + iy“, real part is “x” and the imaginary part is “y“.
We will discuss more topics in my upcoming Articles.
// Malin