From: Al Christians <achrist@easystreet.com>
Subject: Re: financial computations
Date: 2000/05/09
Date: 2000-05-09T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <3918A193.9800E973@easystreet.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 8f9o7c$q3o$1@nnrp1.deja.com
Robert Dewar wrote:
> in several contexts, including bond interest
> calculations, the calculation of interest must be done precisely
> in decimal arithmetic, with specified truncation or rounding
> semantics. You can only approximate this in floating-point.
That's not quite the same thing as illegal, is it?
With 64-bit mantissae available in several programming languages,
including Ada according to GNAT, if I know the rules, I can
approximate this stuff for a million lifetimes before I lose
a cent. Realistically, I expect that when I do lose that penny
there will be some character at hand who will point out the
error and gloat without mercy. I would hate to deny him that
pleasure. It's like playing solitaire. If I always did it
according to the book, what would the kibitzers do? How could
I sustain my humility without at least one grievous error per
eon?
>
>
> COBOL has no defined semantics for exponentiation, so I do not
> know what you are talking about here at all.
>
Let me practice some mentalism, go a little deeper into my catatonic
trance, and look deep into our past .... I see a COBOL compiler
... I see ADD ... I see SUBTRACT ... I see MULTIPLY ... I see DIVIDE
... but I don't see EXPONENTIATE. Could be you are right about
this one, Robert. But wait, what's this? I see COMPUTE ... It has
expressions ... It has arithmetic operators ... It has +, -, /, *,
and, aha, ** for exponentiation ... and ** is very, very slow.
When I wake up it will be almost finished ....
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2000-05-09 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 15+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2000-05-08 0:00 financial computations Christoph Seelhorst
2000-05-08 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
2000-05-08 0:00 ` Gautier
2000-05-09 0:00 ` Marin D. Condic
2000-05-09 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
2000-05-09 0:00 ` Marin D. Condic
2000-05-09 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
2000-05-09 0:00 ` Al Christians
2000-05-09 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
2000-05-09 0:00 ` Al Christians [this message]
2000-05-09 0:00 ` DuckE
2000-05-10 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
2000-05-10 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
2000-05-10 0:00 ` Al Christians
2000-05-10 0:00 ` Robert A Duff
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