Summary: A dynamical system with a skew-commuting involution map is called a flip system. Every flip system on a subshift of finite type is represented by a pair of matrices, one of which is a permutation matrix. The transposition number of this permutation matrix is studied. We define an invariant, called the flip number, that measures the complexity of a flip system, and prove some results on it. More properties of flips on subshifts of finite type with symmetric adjacency matrices are investigated.