## WeBWorK Main Forum

### Displaying small decimals

by Kris Watkins -
Number of replies: 1

In my code I'm trying to display the decimal .00001 but it keeps getting displayed as 1e -05 in the preview screen. Do you know how to fix this?

DOCUMENT();

"PGstandard.pl",
"MathObjects.pl",
"contextFraction.pl",
"parserFormulaUpToConstant.pl",
"PGcourse.pl"
);

TEXT(beginproblem());

do
{
$a = random(2, 9);$b = random(2, 9);
}
until (
($b <$a)
);

Context("Numeric")->flags->set(
reduceConstants => 0);
#$c = list_random(.001, .0001, .00001, .01);$c = .00001;

Context()->texStrings;
BEGIN_TEXT
If we want to approximate $$\displaystyle f(x) = \ln(a - b x)$$ with a $$\displaystyle n$$-th degree Taylor polynomial, then what is the smallest $$\displaystyle n$$ that will give us an error less than $$\displaystyle c$$
END_TEXT
Context()->normalStrings;

ENDDOCUMENT();

Have a look at the number formats section of https://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Modifying_Contexts_(advanced) which should probably help. However, you may be better off just defining $c as a string like "0.00001".$c = list_random(".001", ".0001", ".00001", ".01");