binary to decimal

I'm getting two conflicting answers concerning the most significant bit:
The Math Doctor Says:
Check that against the decimal equivalent of 10110111 binary:
1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
| | | | | | | |_________> 1 x 2^0 = 1
| | | | | | |___________> 1 x 2^1 = 2
| | | | | |_____________> 1 x 2^2 = 4
| | | | |_______________> 0 x 2^3 = 8
| | | |_________________> 1 x 2^4 = 16
| | |___________________> 1 x 2^5 = 32
| |_____________________> 0 x 2^6 = 64
|_______________________> 1 x 2^7 = 128

183 decimal
However a JavaRanch user states:
the most significant byte being 1 or (2 ^ 7)=-128
therefore shouldnt the answer be = -73
I dont see the math doctor taking the most significant digit into accout. Whos right?
TIA

Hi,
The difference between the two ( perfectly possible ) interpretations lie in if the number is signed or positive.
If it's signed then the most significant bit is considered to be negative and with 8 data bits (one byte )we would get a range from - 128 to + 127.
If the number is unsigned then the the range is from 0 to 255 inclusive.
Hope that helps,

from JLS 4.2 Primitive Types and Values

...
The integral types are byte, short, int, and long, whose values are 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit signed two's-complement integers, respectively, and char, whose values are
16-bit unsigned integers representing Unicode characters.
...

Thus when dealing with byte, short, int, and long the number should be treated as signed which means the high-level bit is always the sign bit.
When dealing with char the high-level bit is nothing, just another bit.
HIH

I agree with the JavaRancher. The way I treat this:
1) a negative number is represented by inverting each bit of the corresponding
positive number and then adding 1 (twos complement form)
2) consider the 7 right bits as the number and the 1 most left as the sign
10110111 - negative (remember!) so go back trough the statements above:
*0110111 - just consider the 7 right bits
*0110110 - minus 1 (the reversed way)
*1001001 - invert and start counting: 64+0+0+8+0+0+1=73, get the sign back: -73
Erik Dark

I forgot to respond to the Math Doctor it doesn't treat bytes as being signed (I think)..
GoodLuck ErikDark