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→Binary Representation of Data
** The most commonly-used floating point formats are defined in the [[IEEE 754]] standard.
** IEEE754 floating point numbers have three parts: a ''sign bit'' (0 for positive, 1 for negative), a ''mantissa'' or ''significand'', and an ''exponent''. The significand has an implied 1 and radix point preceeding the stored value. The exponent is stored as an unsigned integer to which a ''bias'' value has been added; the bias value is 2<sup>(number of exponent bits - 1)</sup> - 1. The floating point value is interpreted in normal cases as <code>''sign'' mantissa * 2<sup>(exponent - bias)</sup></code>. Exponent values which are all-zeros or all-ones encode four categories of special cases: zero, infinity, Not a Number (NaN), and subnormal numbers (numbers which are close to zero, where the significand does not have an implied 1 to the left of the radix point); in these special cases, the sign bit and significand values may have special meanings.
** There are some new floating-point formats appearing, such as ''Brain Float 16'', a 16-bit format with the same dynamic range as 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point but with less accuracy, intended for use in machine learning applications.
* Characters
** Characters are encoded as integers, where each integer corresponds to one "code point" in a character table (e.g., code 65 in ASCII corresponds to the character "A").
