Comment by ricardobeat

4 years ago

5e-5 is not really related to FP, it’s just scientific notation. The number itself is still stored as shown in the post, it’s just being printed in a more compact form.

The number after e is a power of 10:

    5e2  = 5 * 10^2  = 5 * 100 = 500
    5e-5 = 5 * 10^-5 = 5 / 100000 = 0.00005

Once you internalize this, you just read the exponent as “x zeroes to the left”.

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ricardobeat

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taeric  4 years ago

Scientific notation is easily seen as just floating point in base ten, though. Had the same rules about leading 1 and such. Add in significant digits, and you have most all of the same concerns.