Misconception: When students use the division operator during declaration or assignment of a Double in Java, like double x = a/b, they forget about integer division, which can result in rounding errors.
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- Emphasize to students that the right side of an assignment statement is executed first to help them understand integer-division rounding errors.
- In the following Java code, students may incorrectly think that
x = 0.5 int a = 1;int b = 2;double x = a/b;- Changing the final statement above so that at least one of the int variables has a double wrapper corrects this mistake.
- This misconception is the result of a few misunderstandings, namely how different types of primitives interact with one another, what order the code is executed in, and what the different modes of the arithmetic operator for division,
/, are. - Note from the CS Teaching Tips Team: To learn more about this rounding error in Java, check out the Division entry in CMP’s Java Glossary.