storing limited range floating point numbers efficiently?

[timfoden]

impressive! your solution easily out performs both of ours

Yes.  However, my solution uses 1 extra bit to store the number, making the total 32 bits.

As it has become clearer in the discussion that followed my post that the point of this exercise is compression, then 1-bit inefficiency may make this method unusable.

Cheers, Tim.

[Riven]

There is little gain in compressing individual numbers.

Compress groups of numbers (either in 1D or 2D), and suddenly you'll be able to save much more than 1 bit per number

[moogie]

There is little gain in compressing individual numbers.

granted, however storing floats in 3 bytes instead of 4 bytes will help compression of lists of numbers.