COMP 273 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Normalized Number, Single-Precision Floating-Point Format, Decimal Mark

• School: McGill University
• Department: Computer Science (Sci)
• Course: COMP 273
• Professor: Piotr Przytycki

Document Summary

We are mostly discussing oating point numbers today, but i want to mention brie y that some computers represent non-integers numbers using xed point. Fixed point means we have a constant number of bits (or digits) to the left and right of the binary (or decimal) point. For example, we might have eight digits to the left of the decimal point and two digits to the right. You are familiar with representations have two digits to the right. That is how our currency works (but the number to the left is not xed with currency). An example in binary is 10. 1101 where we have two and four bits to the left and right, respectively. Note that i used the term digits for base 10, and bits for base 2. We can represent negative numbers in xed point using two"s complement. 6. 5 in decimal which is 110. 1 in binary.