Module 2 Summary

Thomas J. Kennedy

Contents:
1 Objectives
2 Questions to Consider

1 Objectives

Having completed this module students are now prepared to:

  1. Discuss the impact of finite precision on machine representation of floating-point values.
  2. Apply mathematical analysis to examine (i.e., quantify) the magnitudes that can be represented with a finite number of mantissa and exponent bits.
  3. Compare the error that arises in finite representation using the well known absolute error and relative error formulae.
  4. Explain the difference between absolute and relative error, and discuss how absolute and relative error are mathematically linked.

2 Questions to Consider

  1. Why do floating point operations often yield incorrect results, e.g.,
    double x = (1.0 / 3.0) + (1.0 / 3.0) + (1.0 / 3.0);?
  2. How are floating point numbers represented?
  3. How are octal and hexadecimal shorthand for binary?
  4. What is the normalization constraint?
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