High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In mathematics and computing, the method of complements is a technique used to subtract one number from another using only addition of positive numbers. This method was commonly used in mechanical calculators and is still used in modern computers. To subtract a number y (the subtrahend) from another number x (the minuend), the radix complement of y is added to x and the initial `1` of the result is discarded. Discarding the initial `1` is especially convenient on calculators or computers that use a fixed number of digits: there is nowhere for it to go so it is simply lost during the calculation.