1. A method for compressing at least one floating point number, comprising the steps of: obtaining said at least one floating point number represented using one or more bits to indicate a sign of said at least one floating point number and one or more additional bits to indicate an exponent at a given base and a significand of said at least one floating point number, wherein said significand has a length equal to a number of bits between a most significant bit of said significand and a least significant bit of said significand having a predefined binary value; applying, using at least one processing device, a plurality of distinct prediction algorithms to said at least one floating point number to generate a corresponding plurality of predictions; selecting, using the at least one processing device, at least one of said plurality of predictions for said at least one floating point number based on combination weights for each of said plurality of distinct prediction algorithms, wherein said combination weights are based substantially only on prior samples of said at least one floating point number; and encoding, using the at least one processing device, said at least one floating point number by encoding, as a single code, said exponent and said length of a residual generated by at least one of said distinct prediction algorithms associated with said selected at least one prediction.