Section 14,81: floating-point

 Pertaining to a type of computation (or data type) with real or
 complex numbers expressed in scientific notation.  In this
 notation, a number is expressed as a factor multiplied by an
 appropriate power of 10.  The decimal point "floats" to store the
 maximum number of significant digits.  For example, 864.5 can be
 expressed as 0.8645 * 10**3 (or 0.8645E3).  Contrast with
 fixed-point.  See also denormalized_number.