15. Floating-Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations¶ Floating-point numbers are represented in computer hardware as base 2 (binary) fractions. For example, the decimal fraction 0.625 has value 6/10 + 2/100 + 5/1000, and in the same way the binary fraction 0.101 has value 1/2 + 0/4 + 1/8. These two fractions have identical values, the only real difference being that the first is written in base 1