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2.4 Numeric Types: Floating-Point

  • A floating-point number is a real number like 98.6 or .0001
  • Floating-point refers to the decimal point being able to appear anywhere (float) in the number.
  • A Floating-point literal is written with the fractional part even if the fraction is 0
    • 1.0, 0.0, 99.0

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  • Overflow

    • Is an error that occurs when a float-type object is outside of + or - 308. Ex: 1..8x10^309, 1.8e-309, 2.0^1024
    • This is because it is too large for the memory allocated by the interpreter

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  • In general:

    • Floating-point types are for quantities measured, such as distances, temps, etc
    • Integer types are for quantities counted, such as number of cars, students, etc.

  • Manipulating Float-point output

    • To reduce the number of decimals show (like for currency)
    • The syntax for outputting the float myFloat with two digits after the decimal point is
    print('{:.2f}'.format(myFloat))