4 ms·

I saw a very simple visualisation of floating point by simply plotting points along the number line and zooming out. That gets the idea across very quickly!

• wenc 6y ago
  Yes, I came across something like that in my numerical computation course. This was for me the most compelling visualization of what a floating point number was. The floating number line is actually an (unevenly spaced in reals, uniformly spaced in binary) discrete number line that was used to approximate continuous infinite real numbers, in finite precision e.g. Reals 0 __________________________________________________ 1 Floats 0 .. .... .. ... .. ... ... ... .. ... ... ... .. .... ... ... ... . ... .... ... .. . ... 1
  • saagarjha 6y ago
    A more accurate representation might be 0.... . . . . . . . . . . . 1 (Hacker News eats consecutive spaces, it seems like :/)
    • wenc 6y ago
      Correct about spacing. More accurate reproduction here: https://www.volkerschatz.com/science/float.html https://www.volkerschatz.com/science/float.html