Introduction to Digital Concepts
Taught by Will Sakran
Will is an electrical engineer, product designer, and part-time instructor at NJIT. He has a weird and wide range of experience, from missile detection systems to preschool toys. This includes seven fun-filled years as an engineer at Fisher-Price where he rubbed elbows with fictional entertainment icons like Elmo, Winnie the Pooh, and Dora the Explorer. He now has his own design shop in Brooklyn and spends most of his free time cooking, baking, drinking beer, and going on and on about science.
They say we live in the Digital Age. If that's the case (and it is), then it sure would be handy if we could decode and understand the digital world around us.
What does digital really mean? And why all the ones and zeros? How is speech or music captured digitally, and how is it possible to fit so much on an iPod? We'll start by exploring the difference between analog and digital information. We'll learn the binary number system and how it's used to represent data.
We'll tackle bits and bytes and how digital logic can be used for making decisions. Finally, we'll look at how real-world information, like an image or music, can be captured and represented digitally, along with a quick look at how this data can be compressed so that it takes up less space. By the way, how are quality and resolution related to file size?
This class is designed to be conceptual, fun, and conversational. It's low-pressure with (almost) no math.
