1. Fixed-point or Floating-point

Fixed or Floating-point

Fixed-point number

A fixed point number has its decimal point between two specific bits and cannot be moved.

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Scientific notation

Scientific notation is used to represent large or small decimal numbers. These have two parts, the $\color{red}\text{significand}$ (mantissa) and the $\color{blue}\text{exponent}$.

• $1.45\times 10^5=145,000$
• $4.2159\times 10^5=0.000000042159$

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We can similarly represent binary numbers in this form:

• $1.0101\times 2^5=101010_2=42_{10}$