S is sign.
M is mantissa.
E is exponent.
The only term there you might not remember from high school math is mantissa, and a search engine will precisely explain that in two sentences, in terms you do remember from high school math.
The only term there you might not remember from high school math is mantissa, and a search engine will precisely explain that in two sentences, in terms you do remember from high school math.
That doesn't actually get you any closer to knowing what the formula means, though. You need to also define that M is unsigned & 23 bits and E is unsigned & 8 bits. And that alone still doesn't get across the resulting limitations like that precision reduces by half every time the exponent bumps. Sure you can reason about it if you devote the brainpower to applying the limitations to the formula, but it's not explained by the formula itself.
edit: jordigh, not coldtea, first brought up the formula in his argument
That's generally considered a plus (if not a sine qua non) for a simplified explanation, and the larger the specification, the bigger plus.
Else, one might as well read the 100s of pages of specs.
"it is an abuse of terminology to call the fraction part a mantissa, since this concept has quite a different meaning in connection with logarithms"[1] –DEK
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significand#Use_of_.22mantissa...