As the old joke goes:

There are only 10 types of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don’t.

By the time this lesson is over, you’ll be able to count yourself amongst the ones that do!

To get started, binary information is defined as relating to, composed of, or involving two things.

What we, as computer scientists, understand as examples of binary can be broken into two distinct categories:

1. Binary Numbers
2. Binary Data

Binary numbers are expressed as a combination of 0s and 1s. For example, 100110 is the binary equivalent of the number 38.

Common examples of binary data include:

• Machine Code (001010101100111001010010011)
• Boolean Expressions (True or False)
• Hardware states (On or Off)
• Networking and File Storage

Before we start getting too far into how we use the data though, let’s take some time to really understand what binary data and the binary numbering system are.