&gt; You didn&#x27;t say &quot;an exact rational,&quot; you said &quot;an exact number.&quot;<p>You were right the first time you said that. You&#x27;re still right. I immediately said as much in my first response to you. I don&#x27;t understand what more you could want. :&lt;<p>I do know what I want. I would like you to acknowledge that you are basically ignoring the direct context of my commentary, namely chubot&#x27;s &quot;0.1 can&#x27;t be represented exactly [using a computer]&quot; and natch&#x27;s &quot;wtf&quot; about `0.1 + 0.2 == 0.3`.)<p>&gt; If you try to advertise Perl 6 as &quot;exact&quot;<p>That would be absurd.<p>&gt; integers are extremely relevant across all kinds of calculations.<p>In the context of discussing rational storage and arithmetic, integers seem to me to be primarily relevant to the extent one is talking of numerators and denominators and primarily irrelevant to the extent one is talking about floats. Do you disagree?<p>&gt; People who want to truly understand this landscape need to understand the contrasts between various number representations and the pros and cons of each.<p>Sure.<p>But one has to start somewhere within a confusing landscape and try not to get lost by paying attention to details that don&#x27;t yet matter. In this case natch started with the issue of exact rational calculation, chubot&#x27;s wording suggested that rationals couldn&#x27;t ever be stored accurately on a computer, and I tried to get floats <i>out of the conversation</i> until we&#x27;d cleared that confusion up. But you immediately took issue with me omitting a qualification that I thought obvious from context (&quot;rationals&quot;), then followed that by ignoring (afaict) my acknowledgement of your correction, and then we ended up here, with disappointingly little light shone on the very issue we both find interesting. :&lt;<p>Perhaps our exchange was entirely futile. Who knows? And maybe we&#x27;ll meet again and do better. Here&#x27;s hoping. :)