In article <5aaded58-af09-41dc-9afd-56d7b7ced...@d7g2000pbl.googlegroups.com>, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote: <SNIP> > >what i meant to point out is that Mathematica deals with numbers at a >high-level human way. That is, one doesn't think in terms of float, >long, int, double. These words are never mentioned. Instead, you have >concepts of machine precision, accuracy. The lang automatically handle >the translation to hardware, and invoking exact value or infinite >precision as required or requested.
With e.g. a vanderMonde matrix you can easily make Mathematica fail. If you don't understand what a condition number is, you can't use Mathematica. And yes condition numbers are fully in the realm of concepts of machine precisions and accuracy. Infinite precision takes infinite time. Approaching infinite precious may take exponentional time. > > Xah Groetjes Albert -- -- Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters. albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
