3  Representing information in binary form In order to efficiently store, transmit, process and retrieve information, we need a process for encoding the information The encoding process is a method of representing information using a finite number of basic elements, called an alphabet Examples of written alphabets are: The English alphabet: 26 lower case, 26 upper case, 10 numbers and 32 special characters=94 characters The Chinese alphabet (Mandarin): 40, 000 characters A comparison between these alphabets shows us that the Chinese alphabet is a more powerful code as it can convey more information with a single complex character (symbol).
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