Question

I wish to digitally store a very old book written in an ancient Chinese language. What is the minimum number of megabytes (to three decimal places) that it would take to store the book if the language has 3,048 different symbols to store, and the book has 360 pages with an average of 445.8 symbols on each page

Answer 1

The total number number of megabytes required to store the book is

Explanation:

The smallest unit of storage on a computer are Bits. That is, a single on/off value.

This is different from a Bytes.

Bytes are often represented by the capital letter B, bits by a lower case b.

Please note: A single typed character (for example, 'x' or '8') is stored in one byte.

1 Byte = 8 bits.

1, 000 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte and

1,024 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte

Therefore 1,000,000 Bytes = 1 Megabyte

STEP I - Get the Number of Bytes required.

Each symbol = 1 byte

Each Page has 445.8 symbols

The book has 360 pages.

Therefore, total number of symbols =

445.8 x 360

= 160, 488 Bytes

If our answer has to be in Megabytes, recall that 1,000,000 Bytes = 1 Megabyte.

Therefore the minimum number of megabytes required to store the book =

160,400/1,000,000

= 0.1604

In three decimal places our answer therefore is

= 0.160 Megabytes or 0.160MB.

Cheers!