Digital and Analog Systems

It's difficult to find someone who grew up in the 1980s who hasn't heard about Super Mario Bros. And, just as it's perplexing to figure out why a plumber can shoot fireballs from a flower or why he keeps jumping down pipes to save a princess, it's perplexing to figure out the difference between analogue and digital. So, what distinguishes each from the others? Is analogue and digital, like the Mushroom Kingdom and our Planet Earth, two distinct realities that coexist? To figure out the difference, we'll use some classic video games, specifically the NES and Nintendo 64. Let's get started! Before we go into the intricacies, we'd want to define two terms: signals and circuits, which we'll use throughout our discussions. Signals are similar to the fireballs Mario sends around when he picks up a flower power. They always bounce in the same direction, and you could quantify how far they go over time and how much damage they deal when they hit an adversary i...