two's complement, why the name "two"

Posted by lenatis on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by lenatis
Published on 2010-04-09T00:11:26Z Indexed on 2010/04/09 0:13 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 812

Filed under:

binary

|

computer-science

i know unsigned,two's complement, ones' complement and sign magnitude, and the difference between these, but what i'm curious about is:

why it's called two's(or ones') complement, so is there a more generalize N's complement?
in which way did these genius deduce such a natural way to represent negative numbers?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about binary

Finding if a Binary Tree is a Binary Search Tree

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Today I had an interview where I was asked to write a program which takes a Binary Tree and returns true if it is also a Binary Search Tree otherwise false. My Approach1: Perform an inroder traversal and store the elements in O(n) time. Now scan through the array/list of elements and check if element… >>> More
Binary to strings as binary? C #/.NET

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Redis keys are binary safe. I'd like to mess around and put binary into redis using C#. My client of choice doesn't support writing binary keys it uses keys and it make sense. However i am just fooling around so tell me how i can do this. How do i convert a raw byte[] into a string? At first i was… >>> More
EXC_BAD_ACCESS and KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS after intiating a print sequence.

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
MAC G4/1.5GHz/2GB/1TB+ OS10.4.11 Start up Volume has been erased/complete reinstall with updated software. Current problem only occurs when printing to an Epson Artisan 800 [USB as well as Ethernet connected] when using Macromedia FreeHand 10.0.1.67. All other apps/printers work fine. Memory has been… >>> More
How to convert binary read/write to non-binary read/write in C++

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have some C++ code from somewhere that reads and writes data in binary format. I want to see what it's reading and writing in the file, so I want to convert it's binary read and write to non-binary read and write. Also, when I convert the binary write to non-binary write, I want it to still be… >>> More
division by 2 in Binary Signed digit (Redundant Binary representation)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
How can I do division by 2 in Binary Signed digit (Redundant Binary representation) ? Shifting won't work right ? >>> More

Related posts about computer-science

How do I completely self study computer science?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Being a completely self taught programmer I would like it if I could better myself by self-learning computer science course taught to a typical CS grad. Finding different resources on internet has been easy, there is of course MIT open course ware, and there are Coursera courses from Stanford and… >>> More
what, why, when, should I learn computer science?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I'm 16 years old and really an enthusiast on web programming. I know (X)HTML, css, javascript and php. And i heard about computer science. Below are my question: What is computer science? Should a web programmer learn computer science? If the answer of question 2 is yes, then what programming language(s)… >>> More
what, why, when, should I learn computer science?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I'm 16 years old and really an enthusiast on web programming. I know (X)HTML, css, javascript and php. And i heard about computer science. Below are my question: What is computer science is? Should a web programmer learn computer science? If the answer of question 2 is yes, then what programming… >>> More
What topic in computer science is this?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, I am trying to figure out what 'topic' this is called, so I can learn more about it. Basically, I'm talking about designing my applications's architecture. I'm not talking about algorithms. More like -- this class should have these methods and these instance variables, and communicate with… >>> More
Computer Science Resume [closed]

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am looking for a good computer science resume. I just graduated, and I would like to see some samples from real programmers. The ones online don't seem that great. Sorry if this is posted in the wrong section. >>> More