A binary number is number expressed in the binary numeral system. Let $n$ be the binary number. Each digit in a number as a bit. And the definition of the most significant bit is the following: The most significant bit is the bit position in a binary number with the greatest value.
What does the greatest value means here ? Could someone explain with example? (i.e. what is the bit of greatest value in a binary number)
Best Answer
This is usually used in computer programming. There we usually store numbers in words of some size. As we write the numbers, the leftmost bit is the most significant. In unsigned binary with $8$ bit words we can store $0_{10}=00000000_2$ to $255_{10}=11111111_2$. The leftmost bit has a value of $128_{10}$ while all the others have less value, ranging from $64$ down to $1$.
When we borrow that for math, we do not use a fixed word length, so the most significant bit is the first $1$. We have $77_{10}=1001101_2$ and the most significant bit is the first $1$, with a value of $64$.