The paper “The floating point: tales of the unexpected“, co-authored by David Faux (Physics, Surrey) and Janet Godolphin, has been published in the American Journal of Physics (link here). The paper explores issues associated with significant-figure limits, propagation of floating point representation error, and rounding. Examples are presented of unexpected ways in which the digital representation of floating-point numbers can impact the veracity of scientific results. The image below shows a flow chart illustrating how a floating point calculation can lead to an imprecise outcome when processing stopwatch measurements.