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Glossary: A
- additive primary colors
- The three colors, red, green, and blue, of which color computer graphics and color television are composed. Color monitors are equipped with an RGB (red-green-blue) video board to produce their colorful images.
- algorithm
- A predetermined series of instructions for carrying out a task in a finite number of steps.
- alphabetical sorting
- Sorting records in a database in alphabetical order.
- alphanumeric
- Data represented in both alphabetical and numeric form. For instance, in the address 367 Main Street, all characters are alphanumeric, whether numbers or letters.
- analog signal
- A signal often transmitted over telephone lines in the form of electronic waves.
- analog/digital input
- Hardware that senses a physical measurement, like the directional movement of a mouse, and converts it to digital data for input to the computer.
- AND (intersection)
- A fundamental logical operator that retains only the elements that two sets of data have in common.
- Apple Newton
- The most well-known PDA, characterized by palmtop size, no keyboard, a stylus for input, and handwriting analysis software.
- applications software
- A program for a personal computer designed to carry out a common user need, such as word processing or a spreadsheet program.
- arithmetic function
- One of the arithmetic operations -- addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division -- included in most programming languages.
- arithmetic/logic unit
- The processor unit in the CPU that performs arithmetic and comparison operations.
- ARPANET
- The grandfather of the Internet, founded in the 1960s by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Defense Department to network selected universities and defense research contractors.
- artificial intelligence (AI)
- The branch of computer science concerned with understanding the nature of human intelligence, with the goal of simulating aspects of it with a computer.
- artificial life
- A field of AI research that studies the adaptive control systems of insects and reproduces them in robotic insectoids.
- ascending order
- Arrangement of data from lowest to highest in sequence.
- ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)
- The most common character code used for microcomputers and data communications. Standard ASCII consists of seven bits per character; Extended ASCII of eight bits.
- assembler
- A program that translates assembly language code to binary machine language before it is run by a computer.
- assembly language
- A computer language of symbolic instructions and addresses that convert into binary machine language codes on a one-to-one basis.
- attribute
- The label, value, formula, or function stored in a cell. Displaying a spreadsheet in attribute format is useful for double-checking relationships among cells.
- automated machine translation
- A research field in linguistics and computer science that translates one human language into another with computers.
- automated teller machine (ATM)
- An interactive input/output device for banking where customers gain access to the machine by means of a PIN (personal identification number). Normally they can then make deposits, withdraw money, and get other information about their accounts.
- automatic formatting of tabular data
- A feature of full-featured word processors that lines up monetary figures under the decimal point, useful for producing tables of figures.
- automatic hyphenation
- A feature of some word processors that can be set to let the program automatically divide words at the end of a line according to the rules of hyphenation of the language or suggest a division and wait for user confirmation.
- automatic numbering of pages
- A standard word processing feature of numbering pages at the top or bottom as the text is being keyed.
- automatic renumbering of footnotes
- A convenient word processing feature that renumbers when a revision has been made and footnotes have been added or deleted.
- automatic speech recognition (ASR)
- A lively research area in speech processing to recognize a person's voice and respond to voice commands or type out what has been said.