Here is the part that made me understand it all: &quot;Floating-point representations have a base  (which is always assumed to be even) and a precision p. If  = 10 and p = 3, then the number 0.1 is represented as 1.00 × 10-1. If  = 2 and p = 24, then the decimal number 0.1 cannot be represented exactly, but is approximately 1.10011001100110011001101 × 2-4.&quot;