Similarly, 1/100, or even 1/10, is very neat in decimal but infinitely repeating in binary.
In
binary!Peter, thank you for the first answer I have had to this puzzlement that makes sense. Of course with 20/20 hindsight... but that's the trick, isn't it? To see beyond the obvious to the answer that subsequently
becomes the obvious.
My son had given me a clue that I failed to assimilate when he told me that banks and financial institutions always stored their currency data as pennies, not dollars.cents but I didn't pursue the logic of that beyond the idea that it was
how they avoided the problem, but not
why the problem was thus avoided.
Thank you again.
tanstaafl.