"Might be he assumes that kilogram is the same unit as gramm, that changing between kg and g does not change the unit? I do not think so. The question ""how many kilos are there in my bag"" is very different from ""how many gramms"". International System of Units#Prefixes does not confirm such debatable assumption either. Undebatable is only one thing, that he replaces clear explanation of idea behind floating point (exponent) with something mysterious at best. Did he just wanted to say that fp enables huge range? But why to remove the illustration of the idea, which enables the trick and sense of compression achieved? It is not big surprise that his edit marked with 'disambiguation/clarification'. When you remove any clarification, you should make exactly that statement. "