parity - Term Description

What is: parity

Description:
A process to detect data errors that always makes numbers either odd or even, using an extra bit in which the total number of binary 1s or 0s in a byte is always odd or always even. As a result, in an odd parity scheme, every byte has eight bits of data and one parity bit. If using odd parity and the number of bits in the byte of data is not odd, the ninth or parity bit is set to 1 to create the odd parity. In this way, a byte of data can be checked for errors by counting the bits for an odd parity sign. An even count indicates an error in the stored data.