> Just curious, though, why not use floats?
Only because as soon as you have to break into decimals your 23 bit mantissa gets chewed up in a hurry. A double, though still lossy, uses 52 bits for the mantissa, which makes a huge difference (it's usable!). I've never done the math my self, but several sources say you get 6 significant digits for a float, and 15 significant digits for a double (though other sources go higher: 7 and 17). Those that say 10 for a float are lying :).
~ Daniel
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