Matlab precision: simple subtraction is not zero

Question

I compute this simple sum on Matlab:

2*0.04-0.5*0.4^2 = -1.387778780781446e-017

but the result is not zero. What can I do?

Answer 1

What you are seeing is quantization error. Matlab uses doubles to represent numbers, and while they are capable of a lot of precision, they still cannot represent all real numbers because there are an infinite number of real numbers. I'm not sure about Aabaz's trick, but in general I would say there isn't anything you can do, other than perhaps massaging your inputs to be double-friendly numbers.