[Tfug] Speaking of zero...

[William Stott]

The conversation was started based on a review of signed magnitude, one's and two's complement, and the differences between them all. Easy enough, right? You may call zero whatever you like... "off", "low", "none", etc... 

Just like the instructor for my current class, you have generalized what I was asking clarification on. It was the instructor that said "calculation issues," and now you have added "numeric computation has issues of scale." What I was looking for was clarification from my instructor, but I was merely opening dialogue to TFUG on the subject to get feedback. Either way, two's complement fixes the "issues" regarding positive and negative values for zero so I can read about it offline.

Thanks,

William E. Stott, III ]-[ Staff Information System Engineer
-----Original Message-----
From: tfug-bounces at tfug.org [mailto:tfug-bounces at tfug.org] On Behalf Of erich
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 10:40 PM
To: Tucson Free Unix Group
Subject: Re: [Tfug] Speaking of zero...

First of all,
            What do you mean by zero? Then, what do you mean by the phrase
"calculation issues"?
            I'm not demanding that you answer it for me, but you
must make clear in your own mind what you mean by "positive and negative
values
of zero", because numeric computation has issues of scale.
                                                              Erich
                                                                                                
William Stott wrote:

>Recently, a conversion on zero was brought up in a class I am taking. The conversation focused on positive and negative values for zero, and what they meant in terms of a computer. Anyone care to throw their ideas into TFUG on this? The instructor said that negative and positive values of zero can cause calculation issues, but he did not elaborate. I am not exactly sure how since the end result seems to be the same. I did see the problem when doing signed magnitude calculations, but only due to the rules in which the book we use gave to us.
>
> 
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>Thanks,
>
> 
>
>William E. Stott, III ]-[ Staff Information System Engineer
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