Real-Life Math
Computer repair and service depends heavily on analytical and problem-solving
skills.
"You need to be able to figure out that, if X happens, is it
A, B or C that caused it?" says technician Scott Hammons. If you can't
think problems through, he says, you should pick another field.
Math
helps build the very skills you will need in this career and helps you on
the job.
You've been called out to Marlow's accounting firm
to replace the hard drives in 2 of their computers. It's no problem to
replace the hard drive, but first you've got to back up the data on each
computer. You think you can save the files onto floppy disks.
Answer
the questions in the following three sections to find out whether it's
practical to save the data on floppy disks or whether you are going to have
to find another way to back up the files.
Each floppy disk can store
1.44 megabytes of data.
You are going to use a compression program.
The program will allow you to compress the data so that you can store more
than 1.44 Mb of data on each disk. The compression ratio is 1.9 to 1.
Part
1
Computer Alpha has 25 megabytes of data.
- How many megabytes will this be after the data has been compressed?
- How many floppy disks will it take to store the compressed data?
- If it takes 2 minutes per disk, how long will you have to wait until all
the data has been saved?
Part 2
Computer Beta has
1.2 gigabytes of data.
(1 gigabyte = 1,024 megabytes)
- How many megabytes is 1.2 gigabytes after it has been compressed?
- How many floppy disks will it take to save the compressed data?
- If it takes 2 minutes per disk, how long will you have to wait until all
the data has been saved?
Part 3
If it takes longer
than 1 hour to save the data, then you will have to find a new way to save
the files.
- Can you use floppy disks to back up computer Alpha?
- Can you use floppy disks to back up computer Beta?