The total range for the mantissa of a double-precision float is 52-
bits, with 1
bit for sign. This means that the range between your most
significant and least
significant digit of the final summed answer cannot be greater than
2^51, or
you'll loose precision.
The total range for the exponent of a double-precision float is
2^1023, so you
cannot express any numbers larger than 2^51 + 2^1023.
I'm not that experienced with math/compsci, but Excel describes
2^51 as having 15 digits (2,251,799,813,685,250)
2^1023 comes in with 307 digits (won't display above 255)
So you're saying 307 integers and 15 decimals?:
100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000.000000000000001
Thanks,
Dan
