You are running into the old problem with floating point numbers that not all numbers can be represented exactly. The command line is just showing you the full floating point form from memory.
With floating point representation, your rounded version is the same number. Since computers are binary, they store floating point numbers as an integer and then divide it by a power of two so 13.95 will be represented in a similar fashion to 125650429603636838/(2**53).
Double precision numbers have 53 bits (16 digits) of precision and regular floats have 24 bits (8 digits) of precision. The floating point type in Python uses double precision to store the values.
For example,
>>> 125650429603636838/(2**53)
13.949999999999999
>>> 234042163/(2**24)
13.949999988079071
>>> a = 13.946
>>> print(a)
13.946
>>> print("%.2f" % a)
13.95
>>> round(a,2)
13.949999999999999
>>> print("%.2f" % round(a, 2))
13.95
>>> print("{:.2f}".format(a))
13.95
>>> print("{:.2f}".format(round(a, 2)))
13.95
>>> print("{:.15f}".format(round(a, 2)))
13.949999999999999
If you are after only two decimal places (to display a currency value, for example), then you have a couple of better choices:
- Use integers and store values in cents, not dollars and then divide by 100 to convert to dollars.
- Or use a fixed point number like decimal.
You are running into the old problem with floating point numbers that not all numbers can be represented exactly. The command line is just showing you the full floating point form from memory.
With floating point representation, your rounded version is the same number. Since computers are binary, they store floating point numbers as an integer and then divide it by a power of two so 13.95 will be represented in a similar fashion to 125650429603636838/(2**53).
Double precision numbers have 53 bits (16 digits) of precision and regular floats have 24 bits (8 digits) of precision. The floating point type in Python uses double precision to store the values.
For example,
>>> 125650429603636838/(2**53)
13.949999999999999
>>> 234042163/(2**24)
13.949999988079071
>>> a = 13.946
>>> print(a)
13.946
>>> print("%.2f" % a)
13.95
>>> round(a,2)
13.949999999999999
>>> print("%.2f" % round(a, 2))
13.95
>>> print("{:.2f}".format(a))
13.95
>>> print("{:.2f}".format(round(a, 2)))
13.95
>>> print("{:.15f}".format(round(a, 2)))
13.949999999999999
If you are after only two decimal places (to display a currency value, for example), then you have a couple of better choices:
- Use integers and store values in cents, not dollars and then divide by 100 to convert to dollars.
- Or use a fixed point number like decimal.
There are new format specifications, String Format Specification Mini-Language:
You can do the same as:
"{:.2f}".format(13.949999999999999)
Note 1: the above returns a string. In order to get as float, simply wrap with float(...):
float("{:.2f}".format(13.949999999999999))
Note 2: wrapping with float() doesn't change anything:
>>> x = 13.949999999999999999
>>> x
13.95
>>> g = float("{:.2f}".format(x))
>>> g
13.95
>>> x == g
True
>>> h = round(x, 2)
>>> h
13.95
>>> x == h
True
Example:
hourlyRate = 20 hoursLabor = 1.6
I want the answer to show “32.00” instead of “32” or “32.0”.
What I have so far produces the number 32.0:
totalPay = float(hourlyRate * hoursLabor)
print(totalPay)
I’m obviously very new at this. Just getting some beginner’s practice :)
Floating point numbers to two decimal places - possible with standard lib?
rounding - How to round to 2 decimals with Python? - Stack Overflow
python - How to display a float with two decimal places? - Stack Overflow
how to limit or round a float to only two decimals without rounding up
Videos
You can use the round function, which takes as its first argument the number and the second argument is the precision after the decimal point.
In your case, it would be:
answer = str(round(answer, 2))
Using str.format()'s syntax to display answer with two decimal places (without altering the underlying value of answer):
def printC(answer):
print("\nYour Celsius value is {:0.2f}ºC.\n".format(answer))
Where:
:introduces the format spec0enables sign-aware zero-padding for numeric types.2sets the precision to2fdisplays the number as a fixed-point number
Since this post might be here for a while, lets also point out python 3 syntax:
"{:.2f}".format(5)
You could use the string formatting operator for that:
>>> '%.2f' % 1.234
'1.23'
>>> '%.2f' % 5.0
'5.00'
The result of the operator is a string, so you can store it in a variable, print etc.
