I'm learning about floating point numbers and I don't quite understand when one should interpret an exponent as moving the decimal point to the left.By book shows  an example of converting -10.5 into binary in normalised form (using 8 bits):First we convert it into binary without normalisation and use a fixed floating point representation, giving 10101.100We know to normalise it, the decimal point must move four places to the left (so when we get the normalised number, the decimal point would having to move four places right)So in normalised form, we get a mantissa of 1.0101100 and an exponent of 4Now, my book represents four at 100, but it also says to use two's complement. Therefore, can't I interpret 100 as -4? When would I know to interpret an exponent as negative or positive? I.e., when would I know to move a decimal point to the left when given a mantissa?
When do you know whether an exponent represents a movement of the decimal point to the left?
floating point;real numbers