Product Major Version Comparison Oddities

Tomas Zika takes us through a conundrum:

If it’s the first time you’re seeing a problem like this, it can be confusing. How can 15 be less than 13?

My first train of thought was the same as the original poster’s. Ok, so both values are converted to varchar according to data type precedence – similar to this:

It’s not due to a varchar comparison, but Tomas does have an answer for us.