Why is matlab giving me a a very small number when the answer should be EXACTLY zero ?

I'm getting the number 1.4210854715202e-14 instead of getting a zero

I'm doing a procedure of 2 steps where i get a factor first and then multiply it by a vector

How can I stop this from happening ?

[madhan ravi]

post your code

[Abeer Abdelhadi]

I figured it out ... thank you so much

Answer 1

[Mark Sherstan]

The link here gives some ways to avoid it (basically solve with variables instead of numbers). This is just round off error and is common with computers / programming.

[Abeer Abdelhadi]

Thank you so much