On Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 4:26 AM Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwa...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On 2020-04-18, Souvik Dutta <souvik.vik...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I literally tried it!!! And it did not stop because I did not get any 1.0 > > rather I got 0.99999999999 But why does this happen. This is a simple math > > which according to normal human logic should give perfect numbers which are > > not endless. Then why does a computer behave so differently? > > Because computers _don't_do_math_. That is a very important thing to > remember. > > Computer do something that _approximates_ math... in some > situations... if you know what you're doing.
That's not true in the absolute. Computers DO do math. But like people, they can't do more than approximate to infinities. A computer can do true math as long as it involves integers or rationals that are small enough to fit in its memory - just like humans do. > In you're case you're doing IEEE floating point operations. Before you > use floating point, you should read the article by Goldman that has been > suggested: > > https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html > https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/103162.103163 > IEEE floating-point is indeed a variant form of fundamental mathematics, though, so in this specific case, you're not wrong. But in general (and, for instance, when you use Python's int or Fraction types), computers *can* do math. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
