On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 1:47 AM, Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info> wrote: > On Tue, 24 May 2016 12:57 am, Chris Angelico wrote: > >> On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 12:29 AM, Ben Bacarisse <ben.use...@bsb.me.uk> >> wrote: >>> Right, but this is to miss the point. Let's say that 4000 years have >>> defined 1/3 to be one third, but Python 3 (as do many programming >>> languages) defines 1/3 to be something very very very very close to one >>> third, and *that* idea is very very very very new! >> >> Have you ever written one third as 0.33333333 ? Because that's also >> something very very close to one third. > > For many purposes, 0.33 is close enough to one third.
As is 3.14 close enough to π. (Or 256/81 or any of the other historical values.) Approximations are nothing new. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
