Probably simple decimal/binary conversion

[mikeg542]

Homework Statement

This is a question on a homework assignment, and of course I'm not expecting a direct answer but just a way to figure out how to get what I need to know.

The question is: Take you 8-digit student number (20248462 in this example) and convert this to a 24 bit equivalent binary number string. Make the proper adjustments to make your results 24 bit.

Homework Equations

The Attempt at a Solution

First I just tried a direct changing of the student number to binary and got 111101110010110001110111101110010110001110, which is quite a bit larger than 24 bits. Then I tried treating each number as a hex value, but obviously 8*4 = 32bits. I then thought to do it as scientific notation like a floating point value, but again, we only can do that as 32 bits.

So how do I go about doing this? I'm sure it's something easy and I'm just being stupid.

 

[Mark44]

Homework Statement

This is a question on a homework assignment, and of course I'm not expecting a direct answer but just a way to figure out how to get what I need to know.

The question is: Take you 8-digit student number (20248462 in this example) and convert this number to a 24 bit equivalent binary number string. Make the proper adjustments to make your results 24 bit.

Homework Equations

The Attempt at a Solution

First I just tried a direct changing of the student number to binary and got 111101110010110001110111101110010110001110

How did you get this number? It's way larger than it should be.The binary representation of 20248462 will fit in 25 bits. I don't know what trick you need to use to squeeze it into 24 bits.

, which is quite a bit larger than 24 bits. Then I tried treating each number as a hex value, but obviously 8*4 = 32bits. I then thought to do it as scientific notation like a floating point value, but again, we only can do that as 32 bits.

So how do I go about doing this? I'm sure it's something easy and I'm just being stupid.

 

[MisterX]

The largest number that may be represented with an (unsigned) 24 bit binary integer is 2^24 - 1 = 16777215

20248462 > 16777215

But you didn't do the conversion right anyway.

 

[mikeg542]

Yeah, I figured that out (having got it as 25 bits earlier). I copied the wrong number from the work I've been doing. It's actually 1001101001111011110001110, but yeah, I looked through all the course material and there is nothing on turning 20248462 into a 24bit binary number.

 

[DeeNos]

It seems like you are on the right track with your attempts so far. As you mentioned, converting each digit to binary and putting them together would result in a number that is larger than 24 bits. This is because you are using 8 bits for each digit (1 byte), which is the standard for representing numbers in binary.

To get a 24 bit equivalent, you can use a process called "padding". This means adding extra 0s to the beginning of the binary string until you reach the desired number of bits. In this case, you would need to add 16 0s to the beginning of your binary string to make it 24 bits long.

Alternatively, you can also use a process called "truncation". This means cutting off the extra bits at the end of your binary string until you reach the desired number of bits. In this case, you would need to remove the first 8 bits of your binary string to make it 24 bits long.

Both methods will result in a 24 bit equivalent binary number string. You can choose whichever method is more intuitive for you. I hope this helps!