Which base is commonly used in binary floating-point representations?

• A. Base 10
• B. Base 2
• C. Base 8
• D. Base 16

Answer: (B)

Floating-point numbers in most computers are stored using a base-2 system. The digits are binary, and the fraction is represented as a binary mantissa with an exponent scaling it. This base aligns directly with hardware, since all arithmetic is built from simple 0s and 1s. That makes operations fast and exact for fractions of powers of two, and it keeps normalization and rounding straightforward. While other bases can be used in specialized decimal formats, the common general-purpose floating-point representations (like those in IEEE 754) are binary, so base 2 is the standard choice.