On Dec 7, 4:28 am, sturlamolden <sturlamol...@yahoo.no> wrote: > ... > > You don't understand this at all do you? > > If you have a sine wave with an amplitude less than the truncation > error, it will always be approximately equal to zero. > > Numerical maths is about approximations, not symbolic equalities. > > > 1.0 + eps is the smallest value greater than 1.0, distinguishable from > > 1.0. > > Which is the reason 0.5*eps*sin(x) is never distinguishable from 0. > ...
A calculated value of 0.5*eps*sin(x) has a truncation error on the order of eps squared. 0.5*eps and 0.495*eps are readily distinguished (well, at least for values of eps << 0.01 :). At least one of us doesn't understand floating point. Dale B. Dalrymple -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
