On Sun, Nov 21, 2021 at 10:55 AM Ben Bacarisse <ben.use...@bsb.me.uk> wrote: > > Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwa...@gmail.com> writes: > > > On 2021-11-20, Ben Bacarisse <ben.use...@bsb.me.uk> wrote: > > > >> You seem to be agreeing with me. It's the floating point part that is > >> the issue, not the base itself. > > > > No, it's the base. Floating point can't represent 3/10 _because_ it's > > base 2 floating point. Floating point in base 10 doesn't have any > > problem representing 3/10. > > Every base has the same problem for some numbers. It's the floating > point part that causes the problem. > > Binary and decimal stand out because we write a lot of decimals in > source code and computers use binary, but if decimal floating point were > common (as it increasingly is) different fractions would become the oft > quoted "surprise" results. >
And if decimal floating point were common, other "surprise" behaviour would be cited, like how x < y and (x+y)/2 < x. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
