On 11 Jan 2008, at 11:25 PM, Achim Schneider wrote:
Jonathan Cast <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 11 Jan 2008, at 10:12 AM, Achim Schneider wrote:
David Roundy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Prelude> let x=1e-300/1e300
Prelude> x
0.0
Prelude> x/x
NaN
The "true" answer here is that x/x == 1.0 (not 0 or +Infinity), but
there's no way for the computer to know this, so it's NaN.
Didn't catch this the first time around, but: only to a physicist.
(I mean no disrespect to the author of darcs, but nevertheless the
point stands). Back in the real world, 0 / 0 may be defined
arbitrarily, or left undefined. (Defining it breaks the wonderful
property that, if lim (xn) = x, lim (yn) = y, and x/y = z, then lim
(xn / yn) = z. This is considered a Bad Thing by real
mathematicians). In fact, in integration theory 0 * inf = 0 for
certain 'multiplications', which gives the lie to 0 / 0.
whereas lim( 0 ) * lim( inf ) is anything you want, or, more
precisely,
the area of the thing you started with.
I think you're thinking of the Riemann integral (I was thinking of
the Lebesgue integral, and in particular the definition of the
integral for step functions). That integral can be informally
characterized as the sum of infinitely many terms, each zero (it's a
limit of finite sums, where the largest (in the sense of absolute
value) term in each sum goes to 0 as the sequence proceeds). That's
scarcely a rigorous characterization, and it overlooks a ton of
issues (like the fact that neither an infinite sum nor a sum
identically 0 terms is actually involved), and it's scarcely relevant
to the numerical analysis question of what 0/0 should return except
to point out that any definition is going to make *somebody*'s
algorithm silently go wrong...
jcc
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