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Real-World Problems Being Solved By Mathematicians

Digital Imaging

Real-World Problem

Millions of photos are uploaded to websites and social media everyday! But how are the images understood and stored by computers and how do we upload so many, so fast?

Being Solved by Mathematicians

Computers use a binary number code to represent each pixel and translate colour into the language of math!

Each digit of these binary keycodes is called a bit. You may already know that image file sizes on a computer are measured in megabytes, kilobytes, and gigabytes. You may also have heard about cameras that can shoot in high definition or 4K. All of these are made of bits and tell you about how an image or a file is stored!

When every pixel of an image is translated into these binary keycodes, the next problem is how can we store these images so that they take up less space when they’re uploaded? We solve this space problem using compression and one method is called Huffman Coding.

Before you publish your newest profile photo, you may want to add a filter or make some adjusting. Computer programs can transform your photos with mathematical functions!

digital cleaness of an eye

Try Your Hand...

Learn how you can use binary to represent colour; translate between bits, bytes and more; compress data with Huffman Coding; and create functions to transform images!

Slideshow

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