This document discusses number systems and arithmetic operations in applied physics III. It covers addition and subtraction of binary, hexadecimal, and octal numbers. It also discusses representing negative numbers in computers by using the most significant bit as the sign bit, with 0 indicating positive and 1 indicating negative. Examples of ones' complement and twos' complement representation of negative numbers are provided. References for further reading on number systems and arithmetic are listed at the end.
15. Representing negative numbers in a
computer
By convention the leftmost bit (or most
significant bit) is considered the sign bit.
A value of 0 in the sign bit indicates a positive
number,
whereas a 1 indicates a negative number.
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