def METHOD_NAME(words):
    """Generic decoder for data stored using 8 bits.
    We follow mark5access, which assumes the values 0 to 255 encode
    -127.5 to 127.5, scaled down to match 2 bit data by a factor of 35.5
    (`~baseband.base.encoding.EIGHT_BIT_1_SIGMA`)
    For comparison, GMRT phased data treats the 8-bit data values simply
    as signed integers.
    """
    b = words.view(np.uint8).astype(np.float32)
    b -= 127.5
    b /= EIGHT_BIT_1_SIGMA
    return b