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Unless specified by context, numbers without subscript are considered to be decimal. By using a dot to divide the digits into two groups, one can also write fractions in the positional system. For example, the base 2 numeral 10.11 denotes 1×2 1 + 0×2 0 + 1×2 −1 + 1×2 −2 = 2.75. In general, numbers in the base b system are of the form:
Decimal fractions were first developed and used by the Chinese in the form of rod calculus in the 1st century BC, and then spread to the rest world. [ 6 ] [ 7 ] J. Lennart Berggren notes that positional decimal fractions were first used in the Arab by mathematician Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi as early as the 10th century. [ 8 ]
If this number is truncated to 4 decimal places, the result is 3.141. Rounding is a similar process in which the last preserved digit is increased by one if the next digit is 5 or greater but remains the same if the next digit is less than 5, so that the rounded number is the best approximation of a given precision for the original number.
So a fixed-point scheme might use a string of 8 decimal digits with the decimal point in the middle, whereby "00012345" would represent 0001.2345. In scientific notation, the given number is scaled by a power of 10, so that it lies within a specific range—typically between 1 and 10, with the radix point appearing immediately after the first ...
The advantage of decimal floating-point representation over decimal fixed-point and integer representation is that it supports a much wider range of values. For example, while a fixed-point representation that allocates 8 decimal digits and 2 decimal places can represent the numbers 123456.78, 8765.43, 123.00, and so on, a floating-point ...
For comparison, the same number in decimal representation: 1.125 × 2 3 (using decimal representation), or 1.125B3 (still using decimal representation). Some calculators use a mixed representation for binary floating point numbers, where the exponent is displayed as decimal number even in binary mode, so the above becomes 1.001 b × 10 b 3 d or ...
A repeating decimal is an infinite decimal that, after some place, repeats indefinitely the same sequence of digits (e.g., 5.123144144144144... = 5.123 144). [4] An infinite decimal represents a rational number , the quotient of two integers, if and only if it is a repeating decimal or has a finite number of non-zero digits.
Approximating a fraction by a fractional decimal number: 5 / 3 1.6667: 4 decimal places: Approximating a fractional decimal number by one with fewer digits 2.1784: 2.18 2 decimal places Approximating a decimal integer by an integer with more trailing zeros 23217: 23200: 3 significant figures Approximating a large decimal integer using ...