Question

How many bits would you need if you wanted to assign a unique binary number to each (lowercase) letter in the English language, a–z?

Answer 1

To assign a unique binary number to each lowercase letter in the English language, a-z, we need to use a minimum of 5 bits.

Step-by-step explanation:

To assign a unique binary number to each lowercase letter in the English language, a-z, we need to determine the number of letters and find the minimum number of bits required to represent that number. There are 26 letters in the English language. To represent 26 unique symbols, we need to use a minimum of 5 bits. This is because 2^5 = 32, which is the smallest power of 2 that is greater than or equal to 26.