Principle of representing (non-numerical) information:

Example: representing the "gender" information

Example: representing the "marital status" information

The importance of the context used to decipher a code

What is the sex and marital status of each person ???

Without the context, we cannot decode the code value 0 (or 1) !!!

The importance of the context used to decipher a code

What is the sex and marital status of each person ???

With the correct context, we can decode the code value 0 (or 1) !!!

(Don't use the word "You" as a personal pronounce....)

(Try print the variables out in a Java program !!!)

Encoding method used by some commonly used data types:

We will learned more about the different encoding method later in the course

Possible solution:

   public class Person
   {
      String name;

      // Variable reserved for gender info
      int    gender;     
    
      // Variable reserved for mari stat info   
      int    maritalStatus;  
      ...
   }