Week 04 Notes for CST8281 - Fall 2011

Ian! D. Allen - idallen@idallen.ca - www.idallen.com

Fall 2011 - September to December 2011 - Updated 2020-11-12 14:48 EST

1 Midterm Test #1 - 15%Indexup to index

2 Lecture Notes for This WeekIndexup to index

2.2 From Blackboard Course DocumentsIndexup to index

These documents have restricted distribution and cannot be put on the Course Home Page.

2.3 From the InternetIndexup to index

2.4 From the Classroom Whiteboard/ChalkboardIndexup to index

2.4.1 Floating PointIndexup to index

  • There are an infinite number of floating point numbers between any two numbers!
  • We normalize floating point numbers to ensure a unique representation
  • Floating point is expressed in three pieces and stored in three pieces:
    • e.g. 3.1415(10) * 10^0 or 11.101(2) * 2^10
    • sign (positive or negative)
    • mantissa or significand
    • exponent
  • Only the sign can be represented accurately. In a computer, we have a limit on the number of bits in the significand, and in the exponent.
    • floating point numbers have two types of errors
    • missing bits in the significand will mean loss of precision
    • missing bits in the exponent will mean loss of range
  • IEEE 754 Single Precision: one bit sign, eight bit exponent, 23 bit significand
Author: 
| Ian! D. Allen  -  idallen@idallen.ca  -  Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
| Home Page: http://idallen.com/   Contact Improv: http://contactimprov.ca/
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