From: bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)
Subject: Re: logarithms on ada
Date: 1997/03/06
Date: 1997-03-06T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <E6Lt30.1Fy@world.std.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: dewar.857613145@merv
In article <dewar.857613145@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>I hope not! Any decent text book should teach you early on in simple
>terms how to compute logs etc.
Really? I would think students shouldn't be exposed to floating-point
(and therefore logs and whatnot) until fairly late in the game. I know
*I* don't understand floating point arithmetic very well, and I feel
like I'm above-average in the sense that I *know* I don't understand it
(as compared to the average programmer who seems to think floating-point
does (sort of) what we learned in grade school as rational arithmetic).
In grade-school, I was quite sure that (1/3)*3 = 1, exactly. ;-)
Of course, in those days, I had the foolish notion that God had not
deemed 2**31-1 to be equal to infinity. ;-)
- Bob
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1997-03-06 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 37+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1997-03-02 0:00 logarithms on ada Brian R Franklin
1997-03-04 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1997-03-04 0:00 ` Bob Klungle
1997-03-04 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-03-05 0:00 ` Doug Smith
1997-03-05 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-03-06 0:00 ` Robert A Duff [this message]
1997-03-05 0:00 ` John McCabe
1997-03-06 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-03-06 0:00 ` Norman H. Cohen
1997-03-08 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-03-08 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-03-11 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1997-03-12 0:00 ` Norman H. Cohen
1997-03-06 0:00 ` Doug Smith
1997-03-06 0:00 ` Robert A Duff
1997-03-06 0:00 ` Andrew Dunstan
1997-03-10 0:00 ` Doug Smith
1997-03-11 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-03-05 0:00 ` Bob Klungle
1997-03-05 0:00 ` David Shochat
1997-03-05 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-03-06 0:00 ` Robert A Duff
1997-03-06 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-03-05 0:00 ` Jon S Anthony
1997-03-04 0:00 ` John McCabe
1997-03-06 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-03-07 0:00 ` John McCabe
1997-03-07 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-03-09 0:00 ` John McCabe
1997-03-09 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-03-10 0:00 ` John McCabe
1997-03-10 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-03-11 0:00 ` John McCabe
1997-03-11 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-03-12 0:00 ` John McCabe
1997-03-07 0:00 ` Darren C Davenport
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