Neville Holmes

Binary Arithmetic

Digital technology works so well because at the heart of digital representation, there are only a few basic components. Nowadays, these basic components usually are binary digits, bits for short, called binary because they are designed to stand for only two different values, conveniently called zero and one. A stored or transmitted bits state can deteriorate quite badly before a processing device will be mistaken in deciding which of the two possible values is the original.

The Profession

The paper discusses the different aspects and varieties of virtual reality.Digital technology affects subjective reality by changing what individuals experience and what they make of what they observe. Otherwise, reality is an interactive construct. Physical reality is built by the consensus of those actively concerned in defining and understanding particular classes of things. Social reality is built by the interaction of people living within a physical reality that they exploit and change. Digital technology sits behind both science and technology. After all, language is the digital technology behind human social development, and the digital machinery we now use so widely has a profound effect on both social and physical reality. The preceptual reality and conceptual reality were discussed in the paper. Also discussed is the aspect of digital technology effect on climate change.

Towards implementation of a binary number system for complex numbers

These days computer operations involving complex numbers are most commonly performed by dealing with the real and imaginary parts separately and then accumulating their individual results to get the final result of the operation. This divide-and-conquer technique forsakes the advantages of using complex numbers in computer arithmetic and there exists a need, at least for some problems, to treat a complex number as one unit and to carry out all operations in this form. In this paper, we have analyzed various available complex bases and proposed a (-1+j)-base binary number system for complex numbers. We have discussed the arithmetic operations of two such binary numbers and outlined work which is currently underway in this area of computer arithmetic.

Programming with Fortran

Changes made to, and proposed for, Fortran seem to be directed to improving the code that can be written in it. At the same time, supporters of Fortran deplore Fortrans declining popularity, and suggest improvements to improve Fortran code further. However, Fortrans popularity might be boosted by making it a better system to program in by providing support for the programming process rather than improving the product.

32 a 16 Years Ago

Highlights new technologies being written about in Computer Magazine in 1978 and 1994.

Design of a composite arithmetic unit for rational numbers

As we advance into the new century, computers of the future will require techniques for arithmetic operations that take advantage of the modern technology and yield accurate results. Floating-point arithmetic has been in use for nearly forty years but is plagued with inaccuracies and limitations which necessitates introduction of a new concept in computer arithmetic called composite arithmetic. This paper describes composite arithmetic and design of an arithmetic unit based on this concept.

The Numerical dysfunction

ConclusionThis article proposes, as steps necessary to reverse present trends towards popular innumeracy, thatthe adoption of SI metric basic and secondary units of measurement should be everywhere encouraged, being much better suited to popular use than the units traditionally used in the major English-speaking countries,the SI metric scaling system should be replaced by a simple system for representing scaled numbers, andtraditional methods of representing numbers are otherwise unsatisfactory and warrant being replaced. A primary source of good advice about reform in popular usage for numbers, and measurements, and calculations should be the mathematicians, whose profession stands to gain most from wise reform, even if the choice and timing of those reforms are properly a matter for the public and its government to decide. Reforms of this kind would offer an opportunity to improve the aesthetics of mathematics generally, an aspect often considered fundamental for mathematicians [4, ch.5]. Mathematicians also have a natural responsibility for taking initiatives in promoting such reforms, and promptly introducing the teaching of them.There is a very real danger that increasing and widening use of digital technology will prolong unthinking arceptance of a defective system for representing numbers. The essential beauty of numbers and calculation is being hidden from the vast majority of people through persistence with notational conventions whose only justification is their traditional use, and whose ugliness and unwieldiness are obscured by the familiarity engendered through imposition in elementary schools.The opportunity is for a much better notational convention to be agreed internationally, for better electronic measurement and calculation to be enabled by that convention, and for the technology to support better the promotion of public numeracy.

[Comment on “The Haskell Norm”] More on units of measure

The pseudonymous Dev L. Advocate rightly chides the S.1. people about their weird and prolific prefixes (Eos, July 30, 1996, p. 291). But propagating further standard units of measure is not really a better way of handling wide-ranging numbers. Richard P. Feynman pointed out in a letter to the editor of Scientific American in November 1970 that scaling factors properly belong to the numbers themselves, not to their units of measurement. Rather than prescribe strange prefixes, or propagate new units like Devs Haskell, notice should be taken of the commonly used representation of scaled numbers in so-called E-form, under which one Haskell would be given as 1E21 Pa s or 1E22 poise. The problem with this style is that any number has too many convenient representations because the scaling base is only 10.