Why can't decimal numbers be represented exactly in binary?

Question

There have been several questions posted to SO about floating-point representation. For example, the decimal number 0.1 doesn\'t have an exact binary representation, so it\'

Answer 1

It's the same reason you cannot represent 1/3 exactly in base 10, you need to say 0.33333(3). In binary it is the same type of problem but just occurs for different set of numbers.