The comments state the objective is to print to 2 decimal places.

There's a simple answer for Python 3:

>>> num=3.65
>>> "The number is {:.2f}".format(num)
'The number is 3.65'

or equivalently with f-strings (Python 3.6+):

>>> num = 3.65
>>> f"The number is {num:.2f}"
'The number is 3.65'

As always, the float value is an approximation:

>>> "{}".format(num)
'3.65'
>>> "{:.10f}".format(num)
'3.6500000000'
>>> "{:.20f}".format(num)
'3.64999999999999991118'

I think most use cases will want to work with floats and then only print to a specific precision.

Those that want the numbers themselves to be stored to exactly 2 decimal digits of precision, I suggest use the decimal type. More reading on floating point precision for those that are interested.

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:

1. Use integers and store values in cents, not dollars and then divide by 100 to convert to dollars.
2. Or use a fixed point number like decimal.