Why IEEE754 single-precision float has only 7 digit precision?
23 fraction bits (22-0) of the significand appear in the memory format but the total precision is actually 24 bits since we assume there is a leading 1. This is equivalent to log10(2^24) ≈ 7.225 decimal digits. Double-precision float has 52 bits in fraction, plus the leading 1 is 53. Therefore a double can hold … Read more