# Timeline for Is floating point math broken?

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Jul 7, 2019 at 5:26 comment @RonenFestinger - Decimal is NOT more accurate. That is what this answer is saying. For any base you chose, there will be rational numbers (fractions) that give an infinitely repeating digit sequences. For the record, some of first computers did use base 10 representations for numbers, but the pioneering computer hardware designers soon concluded that base 2 was much easier and more efficient to implement.
Mar 26, 2018 at 22:00 history edited user1641172
Mar 25, 2018 at 6:36 comment @RonenFestinger binary arithmetic is easy to implement on computers because it requires only eight basic operations with digits: say $a$, $b$ in $0,1$ all you need to know is $\operatorname{xor}(a,b)$ and $\operatorname{cb}(a,b)$, where xor is exclusive or and cb is the "carry bit" which is $0$ in all cases except when $a=1=b$, in which case we have one (in fact commutativity of all operations saves you $2$ cases and all you need is $6$ rules). Decimal expansion needs $10\times 11$ (in decimal notation) cases to be stored and $10$ different states for each bit and wastes storage on the carry.