On 18/07/2007 7:13 AM, Dee Asbury wrote: > In multiplying a value of xe^-325 with ye^-4, Python is returning zero. > How do I get it to give me back my tiny value? >
It is difficult to understand what you mean by xe^-325 etc ... in Python, ^ is the bitwise exclusive-or operator. The power operator is ** Consider this: >>> import math >>> math.exp(-325) 7.1497915694453328e-142 >>> In other words, e ** (-325) is of the order of 7.15 * 10 ** (-142) Also consider that the smallest positive number that can be represented by the (almost universal) IEEE 754 64-bit floating-point representation is about 10**(-308). So under one interpretation of "e^-325" (1.0e-325), your result is already effectively zero; under the other interpretaion (math.exp(-325)) it is nowhere near zero. Perhaps you had better show us the (no more than 10) lines of actual runable Python code that demonstrate your problem. HTH, John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
