See sample code:
--------------------------------------

float test;

test = 30/17;
println(test + " ceil:" + ceil(test));

test = 30f/17f;
println(test + " ceil:" + ceil(test));

i'm getting:
1.0 ceil:1
1.7647059 ceil:2
which is correct.

are you not understanding floats vs integers correctly?
http://processing.org/faq/bugs.html#integers

Ahh... sorry to bug you.

Maybe this should be added to the Float docs (or somewhere more appropriate)?

...a float variable recieving an (int) floor result seems really unintuitive (but
apparently makes sense). Sorry agian.

ah, i gotcha. the issue is that the ceil() is defined as the next integer up, so we pass back an
integer, since you're 1) more likely than not to *want* an integer as the result in terms of how
you use it and 2) if you want a float to come back as the result, you can just take the result as
a float:

float blah = ceil(1.7);