OT: I never knew...

From: der Mouse <mouse_at_Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
Date: Wed Dec 17 18:47:10 2003

> what is the IEEE floating point representation of PI?

Not that I can help you get it out of google, but...pi in hex to 32
significant digits is 3.243f6a8885a308d313198a2e0370734. This gives
(1)10010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000110000100011010... as
mantissa (the 1 in parens is the hidden bit). The exponent value
depends on the number size (because that determines the exponent field
bias). The upshot of all this:
(single) 0 10000000 10010010000111111011011
(double) 0 10000000000 1001001000011111101101010100010001000010110100011000

By way of comparison, in binary,
   22/7 = 11.0010010010010010010010010010010010010010010010010010010...
355/113 = 11.0010010000111111011011110000001001000011111101101111000...
     pi = 11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000110000100...

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Received on Wed Dec 17 2003 - 18:47:10 GMT