I am having trouble understanding the basics on how to calculate the m, s and c of the formula. I have looked in my textbook but not much of an explanation, also on the IEEE websites but nothing much. Can anyone please offer a dumbed down version of how to approach this. For example, where did the 11 come from Thank you!!!!
Question: Suppose you have a computer which represents real numbers with a 5-bit number system where 1 bit is dedicated to a sign, 2 bit represent the mantissa and 2 bits represent the exponent. Suppose also that you don't want to represent numbers between 0 and 1 and thus your number system does not use the shift in the exponent. What is the largest machine number that this computer has?
Solution:
$n = (-1)^s(1+m)*2^c$
$m = 11 = 1*\frac{1}{2} + 1*\frac{1}{4}$
$c = 11 = 1*2^1 + 1*2^0 = 3$
$n=(1+\frac{1}{2}+\frac{1}{4})*2^3=\frac{7}{4}*2^3 =$14