On Wed, 21 Jun 2000, Christopher Browne wrote:
> > I believe, historically at least, banks have used "mils," or $0.001.
> > They may use finer divisions now. Currently stock exchanges use
> > sixteenths (or is it eights?), but there is talk of going decimal.
>
> I'm quite disappointed in the thought of "heading decimal;" the
> fact of using 16ths is entirely compatible with the use of computers;
> you can do _exact_ arithmetic with that using binary arithmetic.
>
> In contrast, 0.1 must be represented as a binary continued fraction,
> which is _exactly_ why round-off errors occur when you try to manipulate
> decimal fractions .
Actually, "decimal" has many advantages. The problem that you address is
better handled by counting in a different set of units.
If you want to count in "eights" then you should report the price as "407/8"
rather than the mixed expression "50 7/8". Mixing eights and decimal doesn't
really make sense.
As for the "binary fractions" problem, "don't do that". Nobody requires that
you count in dollars. Count in pennies. I can represent $50.88 exactly as
5088. pennies.
Or get a computer that knows how to do decimal arithmetic. They used to make
those, you know.
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