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Floating-Point Arithmetic
Floating-Point Arithmetic
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IEEE 754 double-precision floating point uses 64 bits: 1 sign, 11 exponent, 52 mantissa. Approximately how many significant decimal digits does this give?
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A.
About 64 decimal digits, since the total bit count of 64 directly translates to decimal digits
B.
About 52 decimal digits, one for each mantissa bit in IEEE 754 double precision
C.
About 15-17 decimal digits, since
2
52
≈
4.5
×
1
0
15
determines mantissa resolution
D.
About 11 decimal digits, matching the number of exponent bits in IEEE 754 double precision
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