On Mon, Dec 25, 2017 at 09:45:35AM +0000, Alan Gauld via Tutor wrote: > On 25/12/17 09:08, Siddharth Sehgal wrote: > > >....physics masters student. I am trying to use the Sellmeier Equation > > >I originally state them as floats. However such a process apparently > > >cannot be done with "floats" like these. > > It can be done just with a large error (although as a physics > grad you will know how to calculate the error I assume)
I don't think the numbers or equation is so ill-conditioned that the error will be "large", or at least not larger than the experimental uncertainty in the coefficients. Floating point maths is tricky, but it isn't *that* tricky. Especially not for "reasonable" sized numbers, with only nine or ten significant figures. This is the huge advantage of IEEE-754 maths using 64-bit floats, as Python does: most of the time, the obvious formula "just works". -- Steve _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
