User blog comment:SquareFingers/Disappointed in PTC.../@comment-184.224.225.59-20140614015722/@comment-13254338-20140707003711

SquareFingers, the reason these bugs exist is because of how computers handle decimals and large numbers. Once a number gets too big (say 300 million) or too minute (say a number like 0.12345678912345) the system, instead of calculating things with these exact values, instead starts using scientific notation because it's much faster. So, for example, let's say we want to multiply 300 million by 5. instead of counting 300 million five times (which involves sending out 300 million different signals five times) or counting 5 300 million times (same problem), it does 3 * 10^8 instead of just 300 million to get the numbers as small as possible. So what you have is (3 * 10^8) * 5. To calculate this, it just does 3 x 5, which gives you the answer (15), then multiplies that by 10^8 to make 300 million times 5 or 1.5 billion. Doing cuts down the amount of signals it has to send out by a lot (not sure how much) because it has to send one million signals for 15 instead of 1.5 billion signals for 1. It does the same thing for super small numbers, but with 10^negative number instead of 10^positive number.