Even in python you can have control of what types of numbers are used under the hood with numpy arrays (and chances are if you are using floats in any quantity you want to be using numpy). I would be very surprised if array([1,2,3], dtype=uint8) == array([1,2,3], dtype=int16) gave [False, False, False]. In general I think == for numbers should give mathematical equivalence, with the understanding that comparing floats is highly likely to give false negatives unless you are extremely careful with what you are comparing.