Suppose you've got a string that contains a floating point number: "3.5" or "2.5E-3". Your goal is to get a float from that number. There are a few different techniques to try...
If you're familiar with parseDouble(), you could use that and then cast:
String s = ...;
float a = (float) Double.parseDouble(s);`</pre>
Or you could save some bits and parse directly using [parseFloat()](http://developer.android.com/reference/java/lang/Float.html#parseFloat(java.lang.String)):
<pre class="prettyprint">` String s = ...;
float b = Float.parseFloat(s);
Do the two mechanisms yield the same result?
Ponder the problem, and when you're ready you can read my analysis in the comments...