A student asks:

	To Professor Patt and the Ta's,
	I need help on understanding the following questions.
	 
	 For Problem 2 it states "What is hexadecimal represention of 675.625 
	 in the IEEE 754 floating point standard?"

	 I don't understand if its asking me to put it in 
	 hexadecimal, floating point, or both. Plus isn't 675.625 in 
	 decimal form so that I need to switch it to whatever I am 
	 looking for?

Before I got to it, Tanay saw the message and answered it.  
His answer, which is exactly right:

   For the first question, you initially have to convert the given decimal
   number into a 32 bit floating point number as we learnt in class. So,
   basically you end up with 32 bits, right? Now the question asks you for
   hexadecimal representation of the answer (why? because it's easier to
   read), so convert the 32 binary bits into hexadecimal digits. Because it
   has fewer digits to remember, it is easier to read.
   
   Tanay Shah


        For Problem 3 two hexadecimal representations
	When I get it to ASCII string form full of 111000----etc 
	it's very long. I was wondering if there's actually a shorter 
	way to get the answer faster?

Nope, no shorter way that I know of.  If there were, I would have shown 
it to you.  The hint tells you that you should end up with a sequence 
of ASCII characters.  How many bits in an ASCII character?  Therefore, 
how many ASCII characters?  Table E.2 in Appendix E lists the ASCII 
codes for each of the keys you might hit on a keyboard.

      Last question: Do you know if there's tutoring during the weekends 
      or another informational help incase the unexpected happens? I need 
      all the info I can get.

Nope, no office hours on the weekends.  I figure the TAs need at least 
some time away from 306

Good luck with the problem set.

Yale Patt