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Amateur Extra: ASCII Parity Bit

What is the advantage of including a parity bit with an ASCII character stream? [E8C12]

A. Faster transmission rate
B. The signal can overpower interfering signals
C. Foreign language characters can be sent
D. Some types of errors can be detected

The definition of a “parity bit” according to Wikipedia is: a bit added to the end of a string of binary code that indicates whether the number of bits in the string with the value one is even or odd. Parity bits are used as the simplest form of error detecting code.

Given the other answers don’t deal with error detection at all, its a safe bet that the answer is D. Some types of errors can be detected.

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