[Math] What are the three different ways negative numbers can be represented in Binary

binary

I am new to Binary and we are learning it for my computer hardware class. Since I am just learning, I am not very sure how to represent negative numbers in binary.

I believe they are Signed magnitude, ones complement, and two's complement, but I need an example. I'm not really sure how to show how this is done exactly.

Best Answer

There's no shame in representing decimal -2 as binary -10. In computer science there are different ways to represent negative numbers.

Sometimes, in a method called one's compliment, in order to take the negative number you need to flip all of the bits; for example, 101 negated would be 010.

In a method called two's compliment, you start from the right, find the first '1', and invert all of the bits to the left of that '1': 101001000 negated would be 010111000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_number_representations

Anyway, it really just depends on how you want to represent it.

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