Re: Floating Point Approximations.

Matthias Klaey wrote:
> paul c <toledobythesea_at_oohay.ac> wrote:
>
>

>>Bob Badour wrote:
>>
>>>David Cressey wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Here's another example of floating point errors,  that's even simpler 
>>>>than
>>>>the 21200 plus 2.5% example.

>>>I translated the above into C, corrected it and expanded on it. The 
>>>naive method below ignores rounding. The aware method is aware of both 
>>>the limitation in the representations and in the range of interest 
>>>(chosen as 5 decimal places based on the useful precision of the float 
>>>type.)
>>>
>>>This is such a trivial example that it should make all programmers who 
>>>don't know what they are doing shudder.

>>IBM would be doing a public service to put Cowlishaw's decimal code in 
>>the public domain.  Don't understand why they don't.
>>

Yes, available for all to see, but if one wants to write a program that uses his code and give it to other people, one needs IBM's permission, at least that was so the last time I checked, about a year ago. As always with IBM, permission involves intricate legalities that most of us can't certify. One could get sued for giving it away to a handful of people or selling it for a few hundred bucks.

I'm not even thinking of the USA when I say this, for all I know the penalties there could be worse than merely being sued.

p Received on Thu Mar 29 2007 - 01:43:06 CEST