Electrical engineers use analog and digital data to work everyday. Although, most people don't know it, we do too. Everyday you use a form of analog data. Examples of everyday analog data include any time you have taken an exact measurement. Digital data, however, is most commonly used with computers. In the real world, it is used to measure something with designated increments. 

A few sample analog and digital objects: 

To illustrate the difference in analog and digital data, a person travelling down a slide will be used. This person's position on the slide in analog data would be the distance from the top of the slide. In terms of digital data, the person would be rated against a series of steps (every step goes down the same designated increment). A visual representation of this is shown on the two graphs below. 

Here is an analog graph of the data that we have just discussed.

Here is a digital graph of the data.
In observing these graphs, it should be realized that the increment the digital graph goes by is steps. However, the analog graph is continuous and is on the range of all real numbers.

We have learned that computers operate using digital data. This data is grouped into small units called bits. These bits are combined in complex ways to simulate analog events. This simulation is what allows the complex operations that computers are capable of today, which in its very essence is the goal of computer science. 

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All material and images on these pages are copyright Joseph,Ed. This page was developed for the Thinkquest1999 competition.