Jump to content

Leaderboard

Popular Content

Showing content with the highest reputation on 02/09/21 in all areas

  1. They have meaning. Integers are understood by ALU. Floats and doubles are understood by FPU. These days FPU is builtin CPU. But in '80 and early '90 in 386 and early 486 FPUs were external chipsets. Coprocessor. Floats are in IEEE 754 standard. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754 It is much harder to convert float or double to human readable format than plain integer. Therefore there is plentiful parameters which you need to bother about during conversion. Read printf/sprints C/C++ manual %f and %g.
    1 point
  2. Bit can contains value 0 or 1. If we group 8 bits it is byte. The all other data types have resolution in multiple of byte: 16 bits, 32 bits, 64 bits etc. From computer point of view they are always binary. If typical computer application must print number to user, it has to convert binary to decimal (for non-programmers). It is just on screen. Internally it is is still binary. Conversion takes CPU time and memory. In older times sometimes was used BCD. Now I think it is obsolete. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary-coded_decimal It could be found in e.g. embedded systems. Display and basic maths are easier and takes less time than full binary to decimal conversion (because they need multiplication, division and/or modulo.. which maybe are not implemented in cheaper weaker chips e.g. Atari/C-64 CPU Motorola 6502/6510 don't have built-in multiplication, division and modulo instructions). CPU has flags: zero, overflow, carry, nagative and others. Some CPU instructions modify some of these flags. Usually arithmetic instructions. If you subtract e.g. variable x0 from x1 (register from register/memory) and you get zero result there is set zero flag in CPU. What does it mean? That x0 was equal to x1. Therefore instructions to perform jumps are called je, jne, beq and bne. Shortcuts from Jump if Equal. Jump if Not Equal. Branch if EQual and Branch if Not Equal. They test state of zero flag in CPU. It is what is used by higher level languages if()/for()/while() etc. functions. And by Boolean to check its state and perform jump. What you see on the screen is just bunch of pixels with shape of digit.
    1 point
  3. I think it's about at what level you wish to describe the theory. It is well understood that, e.g., Maxwell's equations are very simply formulated in a coordinate-free way as, \[dF=0\] \[d*F=j\] But it takes a considerable amount of time to explain to students what all of these symbols mean. Then again, in particularly "dirty" situations, it does no good to tackle the problem in such an all-encompassing, highfalutin way. And we're approaching the level at which everything I say is just my two cents.
    1 point
  4. But you specified biological sex, so essentially zero is the right answer.
    1 point
  5. What's the closest number to zero that you can think of? It's that
    1 point
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.