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What is the difference between an output like 2 and 2. ?

Posted 11 years ago
I'm new to Mathematica and get puzzled by some of its output. When using List and operations like Part I sometimes get outputs like "2", "3" etc and some other times I get "2.", "3.". Mathematica obviously interpret these as different, which I tested by using Part as input to other operations. So what is the difference? Thanks in advance.
POSTED BY: Henrik Carlsen
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2 is an infinite precision number.  2. is a machine precision number.  You can see the difference by taking the square root.
Sqrt[2] returns Sqrt[2] as the result needs to be infinite precision.  Sqrt[2.] returns 1.4141.
POSTED BY: Frank Kampas
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