Signedness

When we talk about signedness, we are talking about whether a number can be positive or negative.

Think of it like having a jar of marbles. If you have a positive number of marbles, you have that many marbles in your jar. But if you have a negative number of marbles, that means you owe some marbles to someone else, and you have to take marbles out of your jar to give to them.

Computers use something called binary code to represent numbers. Binary means there are only two possible values: 0 and 1. Computers use binary because it's easy for them to understand and work with.

Now, when we're dealing with binary numbers in a computer, we need to tell the computer whether the number is positive or negative. We do that by using the first (or leftmost) bit in the number. If that bit is a 0, the number is positive. If it's a 1, the number is negative.

But why does the computer care if a number is positive or negative? Well, imagine you're trying to add two numbers together. If one of those numbers is negative, you need to do a different type of math than if both numbers are positive. So, the signedness of a number tells the computer how to handle that number in mathematical operations.

In summary, signedness refers to whether a number is positive or negative, and computers use it to determine how to handle that number in math operations. It's like having marbles in a jar, where positive means you have that many marbles and negative means you owe marbles to someone else.