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 Vincent Lefèvre Crap 

He insistently replaces simple illustration (it was asked above), which says that floating the point is equivalent to choosing scale (micro- vs. kilo- vs. giga-), which you do every day, with opposite statement ""floating point allows to measure both astronomical and atomic scales using single measurement unit"". You do not measure galactic distances with millimetres. Vincent Lefèvre is idiot. He also eliminates further illustration which reminded that scale selection corresponds to discarding least significant bits and ten-bit exponent can denote discarding of hundreds of bits of ""single unit of measurement"" (when you pass from mm to light years you discard hundreds of least significant digits in fact and, thus, pass, to a different unit), which is real idea behind introducing the floating point (exponent), disliked by Vincent Lefèvre. It is difficult to say what Vincent had in mind in his ""clarification"" edit. I cannot find any sense in it. Did he just wanted to repeat the that trivial idea that fp enables huge range one more time? Why should this take over much more insightful illustration, which explains much more, the idea and mechanics which stand behind the trick and provided the sense of compression achieved. Why to remove the illustrative material just to repeat the truism that you've seen above? Do you want to say that technical material does not need the gentle introduction/overview?   "