Dividing a number by a power of two is the same as shifting all the bits to the right once for each power of two. (This is the binary equivalent to shifting all decimal digits to the left or right when, respectively, multiplying or dividing by powers of ten.) The pattern of bits does not change, it just moves the number of places equal to the binary exponent (for instance, 3 places to the right when dividing by 8 = 23). On the other hand, when dividing by a number that is not an integer power of two in binary, the bit pattern changes. This is likely to produce a bit pattern with more bits to the right of the binary point, artificially introducing required precision. This is especially true when the fractional part has a denominator that is not a power of two, as all fractions not reciprocals of powers of two recur in binary. Therefore, it is almost always preferable to use a scale factor that is a power of two. It may still be possible to lose bits that get shifted right off the end of the field as a result of truncation, but this avoids introducing "new" bits that will be imprecise (due to rounding error) or truncated.