TITLE: Question on some arithmetic calculations
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: When $6272$ is multiplied by $0.94$ the answer is $5895.68$. When it is divided by $1.06$ the answer is $\approx 5916.9811$. Why is it so?
Just as a little background, I am using the default Microsoft calculator for this calculation. I haven't pulled out Mathematica yet. Could this be because of some weird variable conversion (int to double)? Any help would be much appreciated.

REPLY [2 votes]: If you take $5196$ and multiply it by $1.06 \times 0.94$ you are, in fact multiplying by a product of the form:
$$(1-x)(1+x)=1-x^2$$
In this case we have $x=0.06$. This is a useful thing to know if you are working with figures like this all the time (e.g. in finance, if prices go up 6% and then go down 6%, they end up a little lower).