Decimals are used every day, for example, when using money. Knowing how to use decimal points and places when adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying is an important mathematical skill.

Since we allow for stems to use the period, e.g. a.3, there has been a niggling parser issue that a decimal like .3 could not be parsed. In fact, there has to be a special case for that (since "." is ...