Byte codified this common meaning. Many types of applications use information representable in eight or fewer bits and processor designers optimize for this common usage. The popularity of major commercial computing architectures has aided in the ubiquitous acceptance of the eight-bit size. Modern architectures typically use 32- or 64-bit words, built of four or eight bytes. The unit symbol for the byte was designated as the upper-case letter "B" by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in contrast to the bit, whose IEEE symbol is a lower-case "b". Internationally, the unit "octet", symbol "o",
Women in computing in Canada Computing: The Pacific Northwest Celebration of Women in Computing: In 2014/2015, Ontario Celebration of Women in Computing and Pacific Northwest Celebration of Women in Computing joined forces and became the Canadian Celebration of Women in Computing (CAN-CWiC): Many of the statistics reported by Canadian studies and agencies are similar to those found in North America as a whole. In the US, the percentage of computer science degrees awarded to women dropped from 37.1% to 26.7% between 1984 and 1998. As well, a recent survey indicated that less than 12% were awarded to women in 2010-2011. Like Canada, the US has