On Thu, Jul 21, 2005 at 03:35:15PM -0400, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
On Thu, 21 Jul 2005, Frank Barknecht wrote:
and [mod 16] counts zerobased from 0-15.
According to the mathematicians' definition of modulo, there is a priori no enforced representation of modulo, and to say 0, it's just as valid to say 0 or 16 or 32 or -16, because all those values are the same value in the mod 16 context. However, there's a habit of naming "0" anything that behaves much like the "0" of ordinary numbers, and the same for "1". Therefore, although mathematicians could've picked 1..16 for working in mod 16, they use 0..15 instead.
In both mathematics and computing, a modulus is calculated from the remainder of the division. Nobody "could've picked" anything.
Best regards,
Chris.
------------------- chris@mccormick.cx http://mccormick.cx