# Number of bits in 0

I have found a few sources which have said that the number of bits in a binary number is equal to

$$floor(log_2(n))+1$$.

But this doesn't seem to work for binary values less than 1. I would expect the value 0 to have zero bits. But plugging in 0 for n is not in the domain of the function. Stranger results are given by plugging in values like 0.2 which give -2 bits. This doesn't sound right. So I created this equation:

$$ceil(log_2(n+1))$$.

It has the same output as the previous function for all $$n>=1$$. It even says 0 is 0 bits, and 0.2 is 1 bit, as I would expect.

Why do people seem to like the first function more? Can someone explain why the number of bits in 0 is undefined in terms of Shannon information?

EDIT:

Here are a the sources I drew from:

https://www.exploringbinary.com/number-of-bits-in-a-decimal-integer/

Given a number, how to find the length of its binary representation?

MathWorld states the first equation is equal to the second, but ignores values less than 1. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BitLength.html

EDIT 2:

I'm looking for a strict mathematical explanation for the number of bits in 0 in terms of information theory. The two equations above give different answers, so which is correct and why? To clarify, I don't mean the physical length of '0' or the length of the string that represents '0', but the value zero itself.

According to Mathematica,

"BitLength[n] gives the number of binary bits necessary to represent the integer n"

and executing this command,

BitLength[0] -> 0


but even the Mathematica documentation and MathWorld fail to give a reason for this.

• NB: $0$ has precisely one bit. – Shaun Nov 22 '18 at 2:57
• Also, please would you link to the sources? – Shaun Nov 22 '18 at 2:58
• @DanielWilliams "a memory bank that contains a '0' is the same as no memory bank at all." That seems very false to me: it contains a $0$, after all. – Noah Schweber Nov 22 '18 at 3:27
• No, $0$ is a state. There is a difference between $\{0\}$ and $\emptyset=\{\}$. – Shaun Nov 22 '18 at 3:30
• I think there might be a disconnect about what "number of bits" means here. I think the sources are referring to the length of the binary sequence representing the number - certainly this is the case in this source you mentioned - so that e.g. ten has four bits since ten is represented by the string "$1010$." Since zero is represented by "$0$" rather than by the empty string, zero has one bit; meanwhile, non-natural numbers like $0.2$ aren't being talked about here. – Noah Schweber Nov 22 '18 at 3:41

The formulas you quote are for the number of bits in the binary expression of a positive integer. As you say, the first is undefined for $$0$$ and the second gives $$0$$ bits. I would say both are wrong for $$0$$ because it takes one binary digit (note I did not say bit) to express $$0$$, but those formulas are intended only for positive integers. They agree for all of those.
This is different from the number of bits for $$0$$ in information theory. In information theory you need to consider the number of possibilities. If you have $$256$$ equally probable values for a quantity, any one of them is $$8$$ bits, whether it is $$0$$ or $$234$$.