Floating point - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In computing, floating point describes a system for numerical representation in which a string of digits (or bits) represents a rational number. The term floating point refers to the fact that the...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point
The simulator also displays a list of the valid mantissas, and both a list and a graph of the valid positive floating-point numbers. Finally, the simulator allows you to calculate the values of arithmetic expressions in the floating-point system.
www.cs.utah.edu/~zachary/isp/applets/FP/FP.html
Fixed-point arithmetic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In computing, a fixed-point number representation is a real data type for a number that has a fixed number of digits after (and sometimes also before) the radix point ( e.g. , after the decimal po...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_arithmetic
Floating point numbers (also known as "floats", "doubles", or "real numbers") can be specified using any of the following syntaxes: ... So never trust floating number results to the last digit, and never compare floating point numbers for equality. If higher precision is necessary, the arbitrary precision math functions...
www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.float.php www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.float.php
A real number (that is, a number that can contain a fractional part). The following are floating-point numbers: ... Note that most floating-point numbers a computer can represent are just approximations. One of the challenges in programming with floating-point values is ensuring that the approximations lead to...
www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/floating_point_number.html www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/floating_point_number.html
Floating point numbers are a numeric data type provided on most machines (hardware) and programming languages. Floating point provides a type to represent very large numbers and very small numbers at the expense of exactness, precision, or significant digits...
www.faculty.juniata.edu/rhodes/org/ch14.htm
The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) has produced a standard for floating point arithmetic. This standard specifies how single precision (32 bit) and double precision (64 bit) floating point numbers are to be represented, as well as how arithmetic should be carried out on them.
www.psc.edu/general/software/packages/ieee/ieee.html
Of course one bit-pattern can't represent many numbers equally well, it will represent one of them exactly and the others will be misrepresented. We call numbers that can be represented exactly, FLOATING-POINT NUMBERS (FPN), the term 'real numbers' will be reserved for the mathematical constructs.
www.ibiblio.org/pub/languages/fortran/ch4-1.html
Historically, different bases have been used for representing floating-point numbers, with base 2 (binary) being the most common, followed by base 10 (decimal), and other less common varieties such as base 16 (hexadecimal notation).
www.answers.com/topic/floating-point www.answers.com/topic/floating-point
However, fixed-point representations are unsatisfactory for most applications involving real numbers, for two reasons: (1) Real numbers that are very small are not ... By contrast with fixed-point representations, these computer analogues of scientific notation are described as floating-point representations.
www.math.grin.edu/~stone/courses/fundamentals/IEEE-real... www.math.grin.edu/~stone/courses/fundamentals/IEEE-reals.html