Junior Data Analyst: Nanospan Project - Tasks and Reports

Task 1: Different data types that could be used in the software for Nanospan

Scenario

You are a junior data analyst at Gauntlet PLC. You have been recruited to join the new Nanospan project that is looking at creating a small wearable device that will act as a fitness tracker and personal trainer.

Gauntlet PLC is a new company and has recruited heavily in order to make this project a success. Many of the staff members are young and inexperienced and will be looking to you for guidance and relying heavily on your knowledge. In particular, the company head has chosen to install his own nephew as Project Manager for the Nanospan project, despite a complete lack of expertise in project management and understanding of computers in general. 

Part A

Prepare a report for the software designers regarding different data types that could be used in the software for Nanospan. Your report should cover the following data types:

• Integer
• Float
• Character
• String
• Boolean

Your report should detail the attributes of each data type, examples of data that they can store and ways that they can be used.

Part A

A decision has been made to purchase some of the components of the software as “off-the-shelf” pre-written libraries in order to expedite development time. Unfortunately, only after the contracts were signed did anyone realise that all of the libraries that need to be integrated into the system use different number systems; denary, binary, octal and hexadecimal.

The project manager has little experience with different number systems and does not understand how these can be compatible. It has been proposed by another member of the team that the binary number system is selected as the “default” and all outstanding parts of the software be written on that basis, with other number systems converted to or from it.

Write a report explaining how to convert between the different number systems, illustrating each with an example:

• Denary to Binary
• Binary to Denary
• Hexadecimal to Binary
• Binary to Hexadecimal
• Octal to Binary
• Binary to Octal

Part B

The project manager is still struggling to understand how numbers can be stored and manipulated in the different number systems.

Write a guide explaining how to add, subtract, multiply and divide for each of the number systems that will be used by the Nanospan project, i.e.:

• Binary
• Hexadecimal
• Octal

Include worked examples in order to illustrate your methods. Your report should also explain and illustrate sign and magnitude, complementation and overflow.

Part A

Due to the size of the Nanospan wearable device there is limited space for input buttons. As such it has been proposed that there will only be two buttons on the device, labelled A and B.

The Project Manager does not understand how with only two buttons we can control the functions of the device. You have tried explaining OR, AND, NOT, XOR, NOR and NAND gates but the Project Manager is a visual learner so needs to see designs for these.

Design logic circuits that will:

• Show an output of 1 if either button A or B is pressed. (OR)
• Show an output of 1 if both buttons A and B are pressed. (AND)
• Show an output of 1 if button A is pressed and button B is not pressed. (NOT)
• Show an output of 1 if either button A or B, but not both is pressed. (XOR)
• Show an output of 1 if neither button A or B is being pressed. (NOR)
• Show an output of 1 if both button A or B are not being pressed. (NAND)

You should have six designs, one for each type of gate and each should include a truth table and a Karnaugh map.

Part B

The Project Manager has little understanding of circuits but has heard terms like “half adder”, “full adder” and “flip-flop” and would like you to illustrate how these work.

Firstly, create circuits using logic gates that show the operation of:

• A half adder
• A full adder
• A flip flop

Next create two circuits in order to illustrate how these would be used. For this you can use the abstracted versions of the circuits, i.e. the adder module does not have to be individually modelled as in the previous step. These circuits should be:

• A 6-bit ripple adder (using adders)
• A 4-bit countdown timer (using flip flops)

Your circuits should be created using the Circuitverse simulator (or a similar tool) and a screen capture should be copied and pasted into your document. Ensure that you have added annotations to the screenshot to illustrate the parts of the circuit and add any explanation that you think is required.