# Numerical precision

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/numerical-precision/78749>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** question, precision\
**Created:** [March 30, 2022, 2:43pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/numerical-precision/78749 "2022-03-30T14:43:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![lmiq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/lmiq/32/18314_2.png) [@lmiq](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lmiq)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 2:44pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/numerical-precision/78749/3 "2022-03-30T14:44:54Z")

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> [@PSA: floating-point arithmetic](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/psa-floating-point-arithmetic/8678):
>
> Sometimes people are surprised by the results of floating-point calculations such as julia\> 5/6 0.8333333333333334 # shouldn't the last digit be 3? julia\> 2.6 - 0.7 - 1.9 2.220446049250313e-16 # shouldn't the answer be 0? These are not bugs in Julia. They’re consequences of the IEEE-standard 64-bit binary representation of floating-point numbers that is burned into computer hardware, which Julia and many other languages use by default. Brief explanation You can t…

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