Changes http://page.axiom-developer.org/zope/mathaction/167InfiniteFloatsDomain/diff --
??changed: -Most people would expect the answer of 'z-x' to be '0.16887242 E-20' but this ignores the fact that the display is converted from an internal binary representation to a decimal one. During the conversion there is truncation error (think of 0.1 in base 3 converted to decimal 0.3333... with output at any finite precision). So 'x' is not what it seems, and neither is 'z'. Below, the constants are converted to binary internally before computation, at a higher precision than x (resp. z) to bring out the differences. We can now see that 'x' is larger than 'z'. So Axiom is correct and the expectated answer is wrong. Most people would expect the answer of 'z-x' to be '0.16887242 E-20' but this ignores the fact that the display is converted from an internal binary representation to a decimal one. During the conversion there is truncation error (think of 0.1 in base 3 converted to decimal 0.3333... with output at any finite precision). So 'x' is not what it seems, and neither is 'z'. Below, the constants are converted to binary internally before computation, at a higher precision than x (resp. z) to bring out the differences. We can now see that 'x' is larger than 'z'. So Axiom is correct and the expected answer is wrong. -- forwarded from http://page.axiom-developer.org/zope/mathaction/[EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
