IEEE-754 Floating Point

1. You must have heard that floating point numbers are stored in computers specified in IEEE-754 standard:
   1. 1 bit for sign (+ or -)
   2. 8 bits for exponent (with bias 127)
   3. 23 bits for mantissa (the leading 1 need not be stored)
2. You may use online tool like IEEE-754 Floating Point Converter to help you understand the meaning of each bit. Discuss with your neighbors about why a floating number is represented in that bit pattern.
3. Write a C++ program to dump the bit patterns for 4 bytes in a float.

   ? 1.5
   00000000 00000000 11000000 00111111
   00 00 C0 3F

4. Discussion: Does the "Little-Endian" rule which you observed in integers also apply for floating points?