# Why does Julia say 1/26=0.038461538461538464

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-does-julia-say-1-26-0-038461538461538464/102995>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Tags:** question\
**Created:** [August 20, 2023, 3:48am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-does-julia-say-1-26-0-038461538461538464/102995 "2023-08-20T03:48:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![Sukera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Sukera](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Sukera)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2023, 4:03am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-does-julia-say-1-26-0-038461538461538464/102995/3 "2023-08-20T04:03:27Z")

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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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