From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f43e6,c7637cfdf68e766 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 107079,c7637cfdf68e766 X-Google-Attributes: gid107079,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,c7637cfdf68e766 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 109d8a,c7637cfdf68e766 X-Google-Attributes: gid109d8a,public X-Google-Thread: f8362,c7637cfdf68e766 X-Google-Attributes: gidf8362,public From: Lynn Killingbeck Subject: Re: floating point comparison Date: 1997/08/10 Message-ID: <33EE3D26.54CD@phoenix.net>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 264253735 References: <33E61497.33E2@pseserv3.fw.hac.com> <33E6D359.3EF4@imbi.uni-freiburg.de> <33E74A62.53E2@pseserv3.fw.hac.com> <5sar4r$t7m$1@cnn.nas.nasa.gov> <33EAD17D.3E91@imbi.uni-freiburg.de> Organization: Re-Tired Reply-To: killbeck@phoenix.net Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,sci.math.num-analysis,comp.software-eng,comp.theory,sci.math Date: 1997-08-10T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Jan-Christoph Puchta wrote: > > Dave Sparks wrote: > > But I've seen a program where one of the inputs was a temperature > > in degrees Centigrade, in the range 10 to 50 with no fractional > > part. The calculated results were displayed to six decimal places - > > very misleading. > > Not so misleading. Many just laugh about it. > > As a physicist told me: First digit nice, second digit guessed, third > digit lied. > > But try to explain this to someone who is proud of his PhD in medicine > ... > > JCP I like A.K. Dewdney's term from '200% of Nothing', at the end of chapter 3, under 'The 226.8 Gram Canary'. "... dramadigits, ... add a certain drama ... the more there are ..." Lynn Killingbeck