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Re: Avoiding roundoff errors in calculations?

• To: rjm@z...
• Subject: Re: Avoiding roundoff errors in calculations?
• From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
• Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 20:40:03 -0700
• Cc: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>, xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <1062210632.7139.18.camel@z...>
• References: <3F4FA206.5E2367A2@m...> <3F4FAFFF.1060900@t...> <3F4FBBFD.7CBA3BBD@m...> <1062210632.7139.18.camel@z...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624

Rick Marshall wrote:

> there are always accuracy issues

Indeed.  Anyone reading this who hasn't been to the mat with actual 
numerical calculations on a computer really needs to know that getting 
it right is HARD and there are a million ways to do the obvious thing 
but get the wrong answer.  One of the great things about FORTRAN was 
that the math libraries were *very* sophisticated and tried to save the 
uninitiated from their own stupidity; and I speak as one whose stupidity 
triumphed over them and once calculated a spectacularly wrong result 
which got placed on the desk of a senior executive and had to be 
apologized for; I still shudder thinking of it.

-- 
Cheers, Tim Bray
         (ongoing fragmented essay: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/)

• References:
  • Avoiding roundoff errors in calculations?
    • From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>
  • Re: Avoiding roundoff errors in calculations?
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Re: Avoiding roundoff errors in calculations?
    • From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>
  • Re: Avoiding roundoff errors in calculations?
    • From: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>

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