On Sun, 07 Feb 2010 03:02:05 +0000, duncan smith wrote: > The precise issue is that I'm supplying a default value of > 2.2250738585072014e-308 for a parameter (finishing temperature for a > simulated annealing algorithm) in an application. I develop on > Ubuntu64, but (I am told) it's too small a value when run on a Win32 > server. I assume it's being interpreted as zero and raising an > exception. Thanks.
I'm trying to think of what sort of experiment would be able to measure temperatures accurate to less than 3e-308 Kelvin, and my brain boiled. Surely 1e-100 would be close enough to zero as to make no practical difference? Or even 1e-30? Whatever you're simulating surely isn't going to require 300+ decimal points of accuracy. I must admit I'm not really familiar with simulated annealing, so I could be completely out of line, but my copy of "Numerical Recipes ..." by Press et al has an example, and they take the temperature down to about 1e-6 before halting. Even a trillion times lower that that is 1e-15. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
