title: Numbers smaller than realmin
body: <p>Today I stumbled onto this plain problem in Matlab:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt; 1/(10^309)
  
  ans =
  
       0
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and everything is fine. Now I type:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt; 0.0001/(10^308)
  
  ans =
  
      9.999999999984653e-313
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and get very confused. Wasn't the smallest number possible in Matlab <code>realmin=2.225073858507201e-308</code>? Why is the above output not giving <code>0</code>?</p>