When doing some exercise in Java I notice that 30.7 may be printed as 30.700000000000003. This is because floating-point numbers, such as double, are actually stored in binary form. That is, in zeros and ones using only a limited number of numbers. As the number of floating-point numbers is infinite — (in case you’re wondering how infinite?, think how many floating-point or decimal values fit between the numbers 5 and 6 for instance). All of the floating-point numbers simply cannot be represented by a finite number of zeros and ones. Thus, the computer must place a limit on the accuracy of stored numbers.

Normally, account balances, for instance, are saved as integers such that, say, the value 1 represents one cent.

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