Floats vs Decimals

Float arithmetics is not accurate: https://floating-point-gui.de/

In case you need accurate calculations you should use Decimal datatypes.

Operations on floats are not associative

SELECT (toFloat64(100000000000000000.) + toFloat64(7.5)) - toFloat64(100000000000000000.) AS res

┌─res─┐
   0 
└─────┘


SELECT (toFloat64(100000000000000000.) - toFloat64(100000000000000000.)) + toFloat64(7.5) AS res

┌─res─┐
 7.5 
└─────┘

No problem with Decimals:

SELECT (toDecimal64(100000000000000000., 1) + toDecimal64(7.5, 1)) - toDecimal64(100000000000000000., 1) AS res

┌─res─┐
 7.5 
└─────┘


SELECT (toDecimal64(100000000000000000., 1) - toDecimal64(100000000000000000., 1)) + toDecimal64(7.5, 1) AS res

┌─res─┐
 7.5 
└─────┘

Some decimal numbers has no accurate float representation

SELECT sum(toFloat64(0.45)) AS res
FROM numbers(10000)

┌───────────────res─┐
 4499.999999999948 
└───────────────────┘


SELECT sumKahan(toFloat64(0.45)) AS res
FROM numbers(10000)

┌──res─┐
 4500 
└──────┘


SELECT toFloat32(0.6) * 6 AS res

┌────────────────res─┐
 3.6000001430511475 
└────────────────────┘

No problem with Decimal:

SELECT sum(toDecimal64(0.45, 2)) AS res
FROM numbers(10000)

┌──res─┐
 4500 
└──────┘


SELECT toDecimal32(0.6, 1) * 6 AS res

┌─res─┐
 3.6 
└─────┘

Direct comparisons of floats may be impossible

The same number can have several floating-point representations and because of that you should not compare Floats directly

SELECT (toFloat32(0.1) * 10) = (toFloat32(0.01) * 100) AS res

┌─res─┐
   0 
└─────┘


SELECT
    sumIf(0.1, number < 10) AS a,
    sumIf(0.01, number < 100) AS b,
    a = b AS a_eq_b
FROM numbers(100)

┌──────────────────a─┬──────────────────b─┬─a_eq_b─┐
 0.9999999999999999  1.0000000000000004       0 
└────────────────────┴────────────────────┴────────┘

See also

https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/comparing-floating-point-numbers-2012-edition/ https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4915462/how-should-i-do-floating-point-comparison https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2100490/floating-point-inaccuracy-examples https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10371857/is-floating-point-addition-and-multiplication-associative

But:

https://github.com/ClickHouse/ClickHouse/issues/24909