Decimal Versus Binary Representation of Numbers in Computers

The dichotomy created by the advent of computers and brought up by the title of this column was a major quandary in the early days of the computer revolution, causing major controversy in both the academic and commercial communities involved in the development of modern computer architectures. Even though the controversy was eventually decided (in favor of binary representation; all commercially available computers use a binary internal architecture), echoes of that controversy still affect computer usage today by creating errors when data is transferred between computers, especially in the chemometric world. A close examination of the consequences reveals a previously unexpected error source.