Another good example might be: you have a class that supports the use of cartesian (x, y, z), spherical (r, theta, phi) and cylindrical coordinates (r, phi, z). For purposes of establishing equality (equals method), you would probably want to convert all representations to one "canonical" representation of your choosing, e.g. spherical coordinates. (Or maybe you would want to do this in general - i.e. use one internal representation.) I am not an expert, but this did occur to me as maybe a good concrete example.