title: What range of numbers can be represented in a 16-, 32- and 64-bit IEEE-754 systems?
body: <p>I know a little bit about how floating-point numbers are represented, but not enough, I'm afraid.</p>
  
  <p>The general question is: </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>For a given precision (for my purposes, the number of accurate decimal places in base 10), what range of numbers can be represented for 16-, 32- and 64-bit IEEE-754 systems?</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Specifically, I'm only interested in the range of 16-bit and 32-bit numbers accurate to +/-0.5 (the ones place) or +/- 0.0005 (the thousandths place).</p>