Floating Numbers

Floating-point arithmetic is considered an esoteric subject by many people. This is rather surprising because floating point is ubiquitous in computer systems. Almost every language has a floating-point data type, computers from PCs to supercomputers have floating-point accelerators, most compilers will be called upon to compile floating-point algorithms from time to time, and virtually every operating system must respond to floating-point exceptions such as overflow. Only theoretical mathematicians care about floating point accuracy. Do you agree with this? Support your answer with examples. Search for news or online articles discuss the consequences of a lack of floating point accuracy. Also consider the practical applications of floating numbers in your discussions.