0450. What is the range of real numbers?
It does not make sense to talk about
the range of real numbers. For example, the largest number we can represent is:
.(224 - 1) E (26 -1) = .16777216 E 63
= 167721600000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
And the
smallest is:
- .1 E -(26) = -.1E-64
=
-0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001
BUT ONLY TO 7
DECIMALS OF PRECISION.
Therefore,
the measure applied to real numbers is decimals of precision. Using the
standard bit allocation for real numbers (1-bit to the sign, 7-bits to the
characteristic, and 24-bits to the mantissa), we can
get 7 decimals of precision (as we saw earlier)