Representation of Floating-Point Numbers

The format of a floating point number in a computer will look similarly to the following:

Sign           Exponent              Significand
+---+   +---+---+---+---+---+   +---+---+---+---+---+
| 0 |   | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |   | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
+---+   +---+---+---+---+---+   +---+---+---+---+---+

Above, $1$ bit (the leftmost) holds the sign bit, $5$ bits store the exponent, and $5$ bits store the significand.

The developers of a computer system decide how many bits are dedicated to the significand (which decides how precise numbers are) and to the exponent (which decides how large the range can get.) In other words, a different number of bits is dedicated to the exponent and significand on each computer system or language.