[Luc]

Yeah, motivating students was not part of their job description. It was all rather backward, and I expect many professors saw it as a way of weeding out the unworthy (here's a bunch of very abstract math, study this for months but we won't tell you why it's important to know as a physicist).

[eru]

Floating point arithmetic is some of the least abstract math. (That doesn't make it more interesting without the right background and mindset, though.)

[Luc]

True, I wasn't clear I guess, but I was trying to say that not explaining WHY we had to learn something was a general feature of my university education, e.g. group theory in the case of math. They just put us physics students with the math students and we were expected to be motivated by the pure fun of learning math. If I had known how much group theory gets used in physics, I'd have put in more effort.

Same thing with the IEEE standard, it's not hard, but it was presented in a dull way, all theory.

[eru]

Yes, presentation (and motivating the design) is key here. Just learning the IEEE floating point standard in itself is dull. Learning about the standard's history and design trade-offs might enliven the lesson somewhat. Same with group theory.