maths: overflowing

Soldato
Joined
2 Oct 2004
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hi there,

I have searched google to no effect.

I need to know what overflowing is in terms of maths and the effects of overflowing. Don't need any essays just a brief explanation.

I thought it was when the calculator performs a calculation and due to lack of space on the display has to round up or down the numbers.

Can some maths whizz please help

Thanks
 
I'm pretty sure it's where x number of bits are allocated for the calculation. Lets say a 16bit unsigned integer is used for the result of an addition operation.

The maximum value would be 65535 (2^16), +1 to that and it wraps around to 0 at the result of an overflow.
 
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I'm pretty sure it's where x number of bits are allocated for the calculation. Lets say a 16bit unsigned integer is used for the result of an addition operation.

The maximum value would be 65535 (2^16), +1 to that and it wraps around to 0 at the result of an overflow.

16 bits => max val = 2^16 - 1
 
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