Question

First, Calculate the 1/3 in binary form using 8-digits. Then convert binary form back to decimal. Why and what is the error in binary representation ?

Answer 1

Fractions in binary arithmetic terminate only if 2 is the only prime factor in the denominator. As a result, 1/10 does not have a finite binary representation (10has prime factors 2 and 5). This causes 10 × 0.1 not to precisely equal 1 in floating-point arithmetic. As an example, to interpret the binary expression for 1/3 = .010101..., this means: 1/3 = 0 × 2⁻¹ + 1 × 2⁻² + 0 × 2⁻³ + 1 × 2⁻⁴ + ... = 0.3125 + ... An exact value cannot be found with a sum of a finite number of inverse powers of two, the zeros and ones in the binary representation of 1/3 alternate forever.

Let's look at it another way - in base 10 which you're likely to be comfortable with, you can't express 1/3 exactly. It's 0.3333333... (recurring). The reason you can't represent 0.1 as a binary floating point number is for exactly the same reason. You can represent 3, and 9, and 27 exactly - but not 1/3, 1/9 or 1/27.

The problem is that 3 is a prime number which isn't a factor of 10. That's not an issue when you want to multiply a number by 3: you can always multiply by an integer without running into problems. But when you divide by a number which is prime and isn't a factor of your base, you can run into trouble (and will do so if you try to divide 1 by that number).

Although 0.1 is usually used as the simplest example of an exact decimal number which can't be represented exactly in binary floating point, arguably 0.2 is a simpler example as it's 1/5 - and 5 is the prime that causes problems between decimal and binary.