What Are the 4 Basic Functions of a Computer?

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Dave Andrews. Today I'm going to explain to you the four basic functions of a computer. The four basic functions are input, processing, output and storage. I'm going to show you sort of an example of how that works using Excel on a computer. Let's open up Excel, click on the all programs. Let's find Microsoft Office and say Excel. Now that first basic is the input. You could input data into Excel simply by clicking in one of the cells here and typing in data. That satisfies the first basic function of a computer which is input. The next one is processing; a computer has to be able to process data. I'm going to put in some numbers here. I'm going to have the computer sum loads up using a formula. I'm not going to calculate that, the answer. I'm going to have the computer do it. So let's just type the equal sign and we're going to run a sum, s-u-m and open up a parenthesis. Let's highlight our three numbers here and do a close parenthesis and hit enter. Here's our answer; 1 2 3 is 6. So it process those values. Now a computer must also have output. Now one example of output is just of actually displaying it on the screen. That's the most common version."