2
$\begingroup$

I'm trying to make floating point number systems a bit more intuitive for myself. There are a few things I am confused about, and I think the best way to clear up my confusions would be for someone to guide me through one question:

How many numbers are there in a floating point number system given the base ($B$), precision ($P$), maximum exponent ($e_{max}$) and minimum exponents ($e_{min}$)?

Wikipedia provides the following formula to obtain the number of normalized floating-point number in a system:

$$2*(B − 1)*(B^{P − 1})*(e_{max} − e_{min} + 1) + 1$$

If someone could explain each term's significance that would be extremely helpful. The $+1$'s are the most confusing...

  • 0
    If you have the number of bits in representation then its quite simple. You can arrive at the number directly.2012-01-31

1 Answers 1