2.5M views · Jan 22, 2014 · 9:16 · 2 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2015–2023
Tom Scott explains for Computerphile how floating point numbers work, why moving the binary point is fast, and why it handles money badly.
Why Hacker News points people here: Recommended as a simple, fun explanation of why floating point gives odd errors like 0.1 + 0.2.
“Tom Scott's fun and simple take on Floating Points is a good video explaining why such weird errors happen”HN comment, 2015
“Tom Scott's fun and simple take on Floating Points is a good video explaining why such weird errors happen”
Fun, simple explanation of why floating point produces weird errors.
Recommended: Floating Point Numbers - Computerphile this video Tom Scott's fun and simple take on Floating Points is a good video explaining why such weird errors happen
“Here's a couple handy videos explaining it”
Handy explanation of why decimals do not work cleanly in binary.
Short answer, no decimal in binary and math is hard. :) Here's a couple handy videos explaining it: this video link
“I still wouldn't use floats/numerics/decimals to store currency either in any db generally”
Cited as source for inaccuracy of floats when storing currency.
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] this video
