Concept
What value does the two’s-complement bit pattern 1010 represent?
Stephen Davies, Ph.D. Version 2.2.2 Through Discrete Mathematics A Cool Brisk Walk / Chapter 1
"1010 was meant to represent a two’s-complement number, what value would it represent? Negative six. The left-most bit is 1, so it’s negative. This means in order to figure out the value, we have to flip all the bits and add one. Flipping them yields 0101, and adding one to that gives 0110 (we had to do one carry). Since the binary number 0110 is positive six, that must mean that what we started with – 1010 – must be negative six."
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