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Floating Point Numbers - Computerphile

Computerphile · 2.5M views · 2014-01-22 · 9:16

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Overview

Tom Scott explains for Computerphile how floating point numbers work, why moving the binary point is fast, and why it handles money badly.

On Hacker News

Recommended as a simple, fun explanation of why floating point gives odd errors like 0.1 + 0.2.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2015–2023

Topics

Computer architecture & CPUsInformation theory & signal processing
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floating pointieee 754binarycurrencycomputerphile

What people said

microwavecamera · 2017-06 · Recommendation

Short answer, no decimal in binary and math is hard. :) Here's a couple handy videos explaining it: [VIDEO] [LINK]

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felipesabino · 2015-11 · Recommendation

Recommended: Floating Point Numbers - Computerphile [VIDEO] Tom Scott's fun and simple take on Floating Points is a good video explaining why such weird errors happen

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mercxry · 2023-10 · Reference

You should still not use MONEY in Postgres, even their own website says so [1]. I still wouldn't use floats/numerics/decimals to store currency either in any db generally, as said by others you're going to end up with inaccurate numbers [2]. Therefore using integers is in fact very good for this use-case, especially if you are in accounting or book-keeping! Source: I work for a Fintech company that processes millions of payments. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Computerphile, played through YouTube.

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