What type of storage does a floating point number generally consume?

A floating point number typically consumes a range of 4 to 8 bytes. This is because floating point representations can include both single-precision and double-precision formats.

Single-precision floating points, which use 32 bits (or 4 bytes), are often represented using the IEEE 754 standard. This standard allows for approximately seven decimal digits of precision and is commonly used when memory efficiency is more critical than precision. On the other hand, double-precision floating points use 64 bits (or 8 bytes), providing about 15 decimal digits of precision. This additional precision is important for applications where calculations can become very large or very small, such as scientific calculations and financial applications.

The other choices, which suggest fixed smaller memory consumption (1 byte, 2 bytes) or a larger fixed range (8 bytes or more), do not accurately encompass the typical floating point storage sizes as defined by the most commonly used standards.