"trucat" wrote:

Thank you Jerry,
You're welcome.

Wish excel had put in a fix for this,
My point was that a general fix is not possible because the available
precision will still be finite. To put it in the decimal arena where
hopefully your intuition is better, what should be the fix for the fact that
0.3333 is not 1/3? If software were to assume that whenever 0.3333 is
encountered, that 1/3 was intended, wouldn't that cause problems when it
wasn't intended? Moreover in some calculations you would need to consider
0.333 or even 0.33 to be equivalent to 1/3; where would you stop? The best
solution is an informed user base who can then take the most appropriate
action for their particular circumstance.

In Excel 97, MS did try to "fix" it in that fashion
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/78113
but IMHO it causes more confusion than it avoids.

Jerry