Value of a E number

[ArchanaSudhir]

Hi,

What is the actual value of 1.534386E-17?

[Reeza]

0

[Reeza · Accepted solution]

FYI - this is scientific notation so it translates to 

1.534x10^-17

https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/scientific-notation.html

[ArchanaSudhir]

Thanks, that helps! 🙂

[Kurt_Bremser]

Although @Reeza's post is rather terse, he is probably spot-on to the problem. Numbers in that range are often encountered when the internal representation of numbers in SAS (8-byte real) causes problems stemming from the decimal-to-binary conversion (ie 0.1 cannot be correctly stored as a binary number).

In such cases, apply the round() function to get rid of inaccuracies happening far to the right of the decimal point.