Q. What is "digital"?

A. Digital, related to digits or the way they are represented. In computing, digital is virtually synonymous with binary because the computers familiar to most people process information coded as combinations of binary digits (bits). One bit can represent at most two values; 2 bits, four values; 8 bits, 256 values; and so on. Values that fall between two numbers are represented as either the lower or the higher of the two. Because digital representation represents a value as a coded number, the range of values represented can be very wide, although the number of possible values is limited by the number of bits used.