Comment by mumblemumble

Depending on context, you can assume that precision will bite you.

The problem is that rounding is kind of a big deal in certain financial contexts, and the process of rounding can greatly magnify floating point's decimal precision problems when you're dealing with numbers that are close to the .5's.

When I said up above that there are some contexts where IEEE floats are fine, those contexts are largely ones where you never have to round, or where you can guarantee that an accountant is never going to see or care how you rounded. So, to an approximation: Go ahead and fearlessly implement the Black-Scholes formula using doubles, but never, ever use them to do something simple like calculating an invoice.