Explore how computer systems store, manipulate, and convert various data types like text, images, and videos through integrated software and hardware. Gain insights into accessible data representation.

Computer systems do not understand human instructions, nor can they perceive real-life data in its raw form. Therefore, computer systems require a way to store and represent information in an accessible way. They use software and hardware components combined to help retrieve information, store it, manipulate it, and convert it back to a human-accessible format. If you want to learn how computer systems perform complex tasks such as storing and manipulating textual data, videos, music, images of your cat, and much more, this course is meant for you.

Information Representation in Computer Systems

**Main memory** or **random access memory** (RAM) refers to the physical memory space inside a computer. It stores data and instructions that can directly be accessed by the CPU. The CPU manipulates the data according to the instructions retrieved from the main memory, and stores the modified data back into the main memory.

Computer RAM is #key# volatile: Data is lost from memory when power is turned off. #key# memory because it exists temporarily while a program is running and gets erased as soon as the computer is powered off.  

## Addresses in the main memory
Each byte of data that’s stored in the main memory can be accessed via its address. The **address** is a number that is stored inside the memory.

At the low level, memory addresses are the only way to access anything stored in memory. But these addresses aren’t convenient to remember and refer to. With so many pieces of information, we wouldn’t be able to remember the address for each data unit.

Learn about the main memory and secondary storage unit. 

Computer basics

Hardware and Software Components of a Computer

Data Representation in Python

Image, Audio, and Video Representation in Python

Data Compression

Memory

Main memory

Addresses in the main memory