What is name of the group of four digit binary?

Answer 1

There were 3 answers when I looked at the question.


2 answers were junk - why people bother wasting your time with garbage for 2 points is beyond me... should be reported as ABUSE!

By the time I POSTED this answer, there were 6 answers above... The answer from " sunshine" makes the situation even more confusing...

NIBBLE and NYBBLE answers could be ok, but ONLY IFF
you are using a computer with a base of 8 bits, and excludes
computers using 2 bits, 3 bits, 4 bits, 5 bits, 6 bits, 7 bits, 9 bits,
10 bits, 11 bits, etc. so that the NIBBLE is only valid on ' a few' of the computers that have been built over the years, and the
definition of NIBBLE can change from computer to computer...
The answer from atekuya is a link that states what a bit, BYTE, NIBBLE and vaguely hints at WORD, are equal to, but it, again is only referring to " ONE " set of standard, modern, widely used,
common, computers, and ignores 9 bit or 11 bit or 3 bit or 2 bit computers, so the " DEFINITION" is based on a great many assumptions, and ignores a great many other definitions...
The definitions should be QUALIFIED with an introduction such as " IFF you are refering to typical, modern, standard, common,
binary, digital, 8 bit lineage, computers, then...... "

As for the definitions of Octet, Octal, Octate, Octo, etc., again, you would have to make certain that you were referring to a specific usage on a specific machine.... One interpretation might be that with 4 digits, the largest of the digits is the number " 8 ",
and ignoring the 1, 2, and 4, and the fact that you count to
15 using these numbers, you could " DEFINE" the set as an
" 8 " set, under very specific circumstances, which, in over a
quarter of a century of computing, I have not seen in common useage...

In any event, I have been programming since before the Apple came out, and on older computers, writing the program lines like
01101001
10111010
00100101

was extremely time consuming, and easy to make mistakes.

So that, depending on how many BITS ( a zero or one )
were in the machine addresses ( the 2002 used 2 bits, the
4004 used 4 bits, the 8008 used 8 and the 8088 ( IBM PC ) used 8 ) etc. and larger mainframes used almost ANY number - 3 bits, 4 bits, 5 bits, 6 bits, etc. so that a list of code might look like
001010
110100
101000

etc on a 6 bit machine.

To make this easier, SHORTFORMS were used.
on a 6 bit machine, the groups of 3 were separated so that

101111 would be 101 111
and then the groups were give a single OCTAL number

Note that in decimal, if you write 1
in 6 digits, this would 000001
but no one writes the ZEROs, and 1 is just 1.
In Decimal if you write 10, this is
in 6 digits, 000010 or, 1 in the tens column, 0 in the 1's
If you write 000011 in Decimal, you get 1 in the ten's and
1 in the One's, so ten PLUS 1 is equal to eleven.
If you write 100 ( or 000100 ) you are reading 1 in the
HUNDREDS column.
If you write 101 ( 000101 ) you read a ONE in the Hundreds,
PLUS a ONE in the ONE's column, or One Hundred PLUS One

This may seem a bit trivial, but please go thru this step by step, since it is about to get tricky...

If you write 000111, you READ one in the Hundreds, PLUS
1 in the TENS, PLUS one in the ONE's column, which equals
One Hundred and Eleven...

OK, one last example.

If you write 000316, you READ, 3 One hundreds, PLUS 1 Tens,
PLUS 6 ONE's, or three Hundred and Sixteen.


OK, now,

in BINARY, the biggest number is 1. That's it.

So that 000001 is one.
Since 1 is the biggest number you can use, to get 2,
you have to move to the next column.

000010 is equal to 2 and each column you move to, to
the LEFT ( thats < way ) is multiplied by 2.

(( In DECIMAL, each column to the left, is multiplied by 10 ,
so that the colums in my example above, 316,
are [ 10x 10, 10 x 1, 1 ]
or for 316 [ 3 (10 x10), 1( 10 x 1 ), 6 x 1's ] ))

In BINARY, the columns are:

. . .2x ( 2 (2x 2)) , 2 x (2 x 2 ) , 2x 2, 2 x 1 , 1

or, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1


SO THAT, in BINARY, if you want to write down "4 " Decimal,

you would write 0 ( 16's ) 0 ( 8's ) 1 ( 4's ) 0 ( 2's ) 0 ( 1's)
or 0 0 1 0 0

to write 5, you would calculate that 4 PLUS 1 equals 5 so that
you write 0 ( 16's ) 0 (8's ) 1 (4's ) 0 (2's ) 1 ( 1's )
or 0 0 1 0 1

OK,,,

how do you write groups of 3 BITS if the code ( way up above
there ) is in a computer using 6 bits ?

if you group 101111 into groups of 3
you get 101 111

NOW, you write the BINARY equivalent of the three bits,
so that 101 is 1 ( 4's ) 0 ( 2's ) 1 ( 1's )
so that 101 is 4 PLUS 1 equals 5 ( DECIMAL )
Note that, the largest number you can get is....

111

which is 1 ( 4's ) 1 ( 2's ) 1 (1's ) which added is
4 PLUS 2 PLUS 1 Equals 7
So that largest number you can count to is 7, which
turns out to be the OCTAL counting system.

((( It seems odd at first, but in the OCTAL, or 8 system,
the largest number you can count to is 7, but look at the
DECIMAL or " 10 " system you use every day, - the largest number you can count to, before moving to the next colum
is --- " 9 ".
ie, if you count, you get :

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
You can see that after counting to 9, I ran out of counting numbers, and had to start over with a " 1" in the NEXT COLUMN.

In OCTAL, you count
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
10 and note that " 10 " is not "10" decimal, but the
"1" is the next OCTAL column, which is an 8
THUS, the columns in OCTAL, are
8 x ( 8 x 8 ), 8 x 8 , 8x 1
or 512, 64, 8, 1


The SETS of 3 BITS, grouped together, are coded in
OCTAL shorthand....

THUS....

101111 becomes 101 = 5 111 = 7, or, 57 in OCTAL
This SHORTHAND, is a LOT easier to read:

01
75
36
23
40

instead of lines like

101101
111000
100100
001111
111110
000001

etc. which , after a few hundred pages, would start to look like
garbage, and the chances of making a mistake would be
great.

The grouping of " 3 " bits, is OCTAL or 8 or OCTET,
although the word OCTET is rarely used in this sense
now, since there are no 6, or 9, or 12 bit computers being
manufactured, as there were, ( not too long ago ! )
On a 12 bit computer the code would look like
101001010010
111010001110
000010001001
111111010001
111111111111
etc. and you can see that writing this code would be mind numbing, whereas, writing the Octal Shorthand,

3657
1111
0003
5724
1010
7777

would be much easier, and have less mistakes.

Octal Shorthand was so common at one time that the
" FIRST HANDHELD Personal Computer", the
HP ( Hewlett-Packard ) 65, which had a motor that fed in
magnetic programmable cards, had an OCT key on the
calculator keyboard... ( you can read about this 'calculator/ computer' on the hp.com website, on their museum. Or, if
you are like me, you just look down - I am using one ! )

NOW,

to the group of 4 binary digits...

As I stated , Intel's 2002 was a 2 bit computer, with roughly 2000
transistors, ( Hence the 2002 name ) and started the entire " PC " trend as we know it.
It was followed by the 4004 ( 4 bits ) and the 8008 ( 8 Bits )
so that the standard grouping was of 8 characters in Binary
with introduction of the " PC " ( 8088 )

The PC code looked like:

10001110
10101001
11111111
00000000
10100001
10100010
00010001
11101010

etc. and, again, it was murder to try to read or write the code.

so that the numbers were grouped in 4's, and a shorthand
developed...

so that

00110101

would become two groups of 4, 0011 and 0101
and these groups were simplified into the binary
equivalents
0011 is 0 ( 8's) PLUS 0 ( 4's ) Plus 1 ( 2's ) PLUS 1 ( 1's)
which equals 3
0101 is 0 ( 8's ) PLUS 1 ( 4's ) PLUS 0 (2's ) PLUS 1 ( 1's)
which equals 5
so that 00110101 equals a shorthand of groups of 4 BITS
equal to 35
Now it gets tricky

11111111 is 1111 and 1111
which are 1 ( 8's ) plus 1 (4's) plus 1( 2's ) plus 1 (1's)
which is 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 which is 15....
In DECIMAL, there is NO CHARACTER for 15 ( two digits, not one )
How so you write a SINGLE character for the group of 4?

Using the 8 segment used on digital clocks, you can get
simplified LETTERS, by using combinations of the 7
straight lines. Look at a digital watch - if there is an " 8"
on one of the numbers, you can see that there are 7 straight
lines, -- these can spell A, b, C, d, E, and F without any
confusion.
So in counting groups of 4 binary BITS, you count,
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A b C d E F which is the same as
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

We use DECIMAL ( 10 ) but now we have 15, ( 5 EXTRA, )
so the new counting code Shorthand of groups of 4 BITS
is called HEXa DECIMAL or, for short HEX. *( Hexa = 5 )

Thus rows of numbers like
1000111010001110
1010100110101001
1111111111111111
0000000000000000
1010000110100001
1010001010100010
0001000110100010
1110101011101010

now become "HEX" shorthand of things like
A08B
925F
FFAB
39F1
C39D
etc. which is much more 'HUMAN' friendly.

Groups of 4 binary digits, is NOT generally octet (octal, octate, octopus, octane, etc. ) as someone stated above.
Groups of 4 binary digits can be a WORD in some computers,
or a BYTE. On the 2002 Chip from Intel, 4 digits would be
2 words or 2 BYTES.
Depending on what computer you are using, 4 bits, can be
grouped and called different things.... On some computers 4 BITS is called a NIBBLE ! ( NyBBLE )( But ONLY on a computer that uses 8 bits as a WORD, - not 6 or 9 or 11 bits, etc. -- on a 4 bit computer a NIBBLE would be 2 BITS, and on a 12 bit computer a nibble might be 6 digits, so that you have to refer to terms WITH RESPECT to the specific computer you are using !! ))
On a PENTIUM, that uses 32 BITS, groups of 4 BITS,
would typically be used to make HEXADECIMAL
Shorthand, so that the actual BINARY CODE
01010010001010100101010010101011
00010011101010001110101010100111
etc. would be written as something like
A9382BCD
FFFF0015
000038F0
etc. which is MUCH easier to deal with.

You might ask " where would you use HEX, anyway", and you
can see HEX everywhere. Just look in the CONTROL PANEL
under Device Manager, and look at the resources used - IRQ's, MEMORY, I/O, and DMA's. Look at the resources used under
I/O for your printer, etc. and you will see HEX numbers.

BEFORE Apples, PC's and "home" computers, we built our own computers by hand, and all we had to program them was either
a row of 8 switches ( each switch was Up for 1 and down for 0 ),
or, on the really fancy machines, we had a HEX keypad, with
0,1,2,3...A,b,C,d,E,F, and these were used to enter in the programs..... some of these computers were about the size of a 3 ringed
binder, and some even came with a 3 ringed binder for the computer, the manual, and the notes !

You did not state WHICH computer you were grouping
four digit binary numbers on...
so that I can only GUESS what you are referring to...
The number 1 answer would have to be, a modern
8, 16, or 32 bit BINARY, DIGITAL, computer, and that
you are refering to HEX code.
Another definition of the grouping of 4 might be the term
" Binary Coded Decimal" since there is a conversion of
the decimal total of the 4 BITS, into another system of units.
ex. decimal " 5 " is 0101-- a group of 4 BINARY digits, however,
the Binary Coded Decimal falls short with the number 1111 --
iff you wish to use a single character for 15 ! ! !
NOTE that BCD translates one way from a single character of 0 to 9 into four BITS, while HEX translates one way from any four BITS to a single character, AND BACK! HEX rules!

Hope this helps explain what the grouping of 4's all
about, and how it works !

robin

Answer 2

"In order to represent the 10 decimal digits 0,1,...,9 it is necessary to use at least four binary digits. Since there are 16 combinations of four binary digits of which only 10 combinations are used, it is possible to form a very large number of distinct codes. Of particular importance is the class of weighted codes, whose main characteristic is that each binary digit is assigned a “weight,” and for each group of four bits, the sum of the weights of those binary digits whose value is 1 is equal to the decimal digit which they represent. In other words, if w1, w2, w3, and w4 are the weights of the binary digits and x1, x2, x3, and x4 are the corresponding digit values, then the decimal digit N=w4x4 + w3x3 + w2x2 + w1x1 is represented by the binary sequence x4x3x2x1. A sequence of binary digits which represents a decimal digit is called a code word."
http://www.mtsu.edu/~cscbp/3080/encoding.htm

Answer 3

The name for a group of four switches, or four binary digits is called a NIBBLE. A NIBBLE is made of four BITS and can store numbers from 0 to 15, for a total of 16 possible numbers. If you were to connect two NIBBLES together, you would have a group consisting of eight BITS. A group of eight BITS is called a BYTE. One BYTE can store numbers from 0 to 255, for a total of 256 numbers.

Answer 4

Christian infinite .... you may continually end your speech / dance or inspite of with "C U" .... form of a punch line to "See You". in basic terms keep in concepts now to not positioned "next Time" on your punch line.

Answer 5

its called an "octate"

ask all questions here
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Answer 6

It's actually "nybble", with a 'y'. It's half a byte.

Answer 7

leet

Answer 8

Quaternary. (I think) ?