As a complete layman with only a cursory knowledge of programming, as well as a complete lack of math skills above Algebra 2, (I didn't even complete that, tbh, once they threw graphing into the equation. I did get slope-intercept form down, but that's it.)

I ended up finding this easier to understand than I expected, and a great read.

I love explanations like these, with a visual breakdown. It really helps it "click."

as long as I glazed over the math formulas and didn't let the numbers overwhelm me.

This is what I took away: the exponent "reaches" out to the max value of the [0,1] [2,4] etc, and the number represented tends to be like 51-53% of the way down the line of the mantissa.

It "clicked" a bit for me, see? Am I way off?

This is the way I always learned math the best in school, an alternate explanation that helps it "click."

Very good explanation, from my point of view, of how floating point numbers work and what they even are.

That's a nice feeling for someone like me who is pretty bad at math and finds formulas like the one shown in the article to be, frankly, indecipherable.

But now I (sort of) understand how floating point numbers work, (sort of) what they are, why they are important, and what role they play.

Could I program anything using one? No. But, I could learn someday, and explanations like these give me some hope that I just might be able to learn a programming language if I put the effort in. That I could learn the math required of me, even!