The classic paper is http://docs.sun.com/source/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html entitled What every computer programmer/scientist should know about floating point... I've been involved with computer math since math chips were a new idea and came on S100 boards for 8-bit machines--- this paper would have saved me a great deal of frustration had I had it available to me in the long ago...
On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 4:51 AM, prad <p...@towardsfreedom.com> wrote: > Sam Griff <sgrif...@gmail.com> writes: > >> Granted it is a very small amount to be off by >> > the being off by a small amount is a result of the way floating point > numbers (decimal) are stored in the computer's memory (binary). > > whereas integers are easy: > 1 dec 0001 bin > 5 dec 0101 bin > 9 dec 1001 bin > > stuff like 3.1416 require a more imaginative effort that will not be an > exact value. it'll be close enough for practical purpose, but no cigar. > > the main advantage of floating point is that you have a much larger > range available to you admittedly at the expense of some precision. > > here are some links if you want to explore this further: > > Floating point - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point > > Fixed-point arithmetic > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_arithmetic > > Floating point representation > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-8fMtUNX1A > > (there are no doubt better explanations, but this is what i found on > short notice). > > -- > in friendship, > prad > > _________________________________________________ > For list-related administrative tasks: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users > _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
