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Multilingual Demographic Dictionary, second unified edition, English volume

Non-numerical processing

Multilingual Demographic Dictionary, second unified edition, English vol.
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Non-numerical processing  (NON-NUMERICAL processing)


Any information processed in a computer (225-2) undergoes three main phases. First, data entry 1 or input 1 which may be done by using an on line 2 device such as a keyboard console (227-8). Data which is already stored in the computer may be accessed from either central memory (226-2) or from one of the mass storage devices (226-3) and used as input data. This is part of the data collection 3★ which goes from extraction (220-1) to the transcription on an electronic medium, through validity checks (221-7) and consistency checks (221-18 that can be made ​​during data entry when working on line. The second phase, processing (220-2), is divided into two main types: numerical processing 4 and non-numerical processing 5. Statistical or arithmetic computations are normally the operations contained in the former while data manipulation operations are the focus in the latter. In a third phase, occasionally referred to as output phase, the processed results 6 or output 6 may be printed out on the line printer (227-6) or saved as a file on a mass storage device (226-3) for further processing. Results may also be diverted to a plotter 7 to obtain processed results in the form of a graph or a figure. More...