introduction In 1991, a Patriot missile defense system in Saudi Arabia failed to intercept an incoming Scud missile, resulting in the tragic deaths of 28 American soldiers. The cause? A tiny floating point error that accumulated over time, throwing off the system’s timing by just 0.34 seconds. This incident highlights the critical importance of understanding floating point numbers in computer systems. Floating point representation allows computers to work with a wide range of real numbers, from the microscopic to the astronomical.