Decimal and, only the best mathematicians were able to multiply or divide large numbers. These difficulties were completely solved with the introduction of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system for representing integers. This system has been extended to represent some non-integer numbers, called "decimal fractions" or "decimal numbers" for forming the "decimal numeral system". For writing numbers, the decimal system uses ten decimal digits, a decimal mark, and, for negative numbers, a minus sign "−". The decimal digits are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; the decimal separator is the dot "" in many countries (including English speaking ones),
Single-precision floating-point format 127 represents the actual zero (i.e. for 2 to be one, e must be 127). Exponents range from −126 to +127 because exponents of −127 (all 0s) and +128 (all 1s) are reserved for special numbers. The true significand includes 23 fraction bits to the right of the binary point and an "implicit leading bit" (to the left of the binary point) with value 1, unless the exponent is stored with all zeros. Thus only 23 fraction bits of the significand appear in the memory format, but the total precision is 24 bits (equivalent to log(2) ≈ 7.225 decimal digits).