Think of floating point as a "floating" "point" like the dot that separates the two parts of a number like 3.1415. It floats around because this allows you to h

Think of floating point as a "floating" "point" like the dot that separates the two parts of a number like 3.1415. It floats around because this allows you to have more precision when the number is small without giving up the ability to represent large number. Fixed point number encodings also exist and are much simpler, e.g. use 24 bits for the left hand side and use 8 bits for the decimal part. Anyway, thought I'd give you some background. This stuff is easy to look up too. You're probably getting downvoted because HN doesn't really like unsubstantive comments.