Working with numbers

One of the most common types of data is numbers. The most common types in .NET for working with numbers are shown in Table 8.1:

Namespace	Example types	Description
System	SByte , Int16 , Int32 , Int64 , Int128	Integers; that is, zero, and positive and negative whole numbers.
System	Byte , UInt16 , UInt32 , UInt64 , UInt128	Cardinals; that is, zero and positive whole numbers.
System	Half , Single , Double	Reals; that is, floating-point numbers.
System	Decimal	Accurate reals; that is, for use in science, engineering, or financial scenarios.
System.Numerics	BigInteger , Complex , Quaternion	Arbitrarily large integers, complex numbers, and quaternion numbers.

Table 8.1: Common .NET number types

.NET has had the 32-bit float and 64-bit double types since .NET Framework 1.0 was released in 2002. The IEEE 754 specification also defines a 16-bit floating-point standard. Machine learning and other algorithms would benefit from this smaller, lower-precision...