Answer from cs61c-ax (Amanda Alfonso 15906918) for Question 4
FOR: standards are widely implemented, require minimum accuracy, operations must be commutative, has fixed a lot of problems from the past (esp. around floating points), history proves that it is very difficult and time consuming to create an alternative

AGAINST: need to represent "the compiler-writing community" more so that more hardware features are available to programmers - primarily, IEEE 754 and its followers would benefit greatly from compiler support since otherwise great features are worthless.