On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Kagamin <s...@here.lot> wrote: > Walter Bright Wrote: > > > How do you decide how many bits should be enough for any algorithm? > > > > The thing is, the FPU has 53 bits of precision and so ought to be correct > to the > > last bit. > > It's not me, it's the programmer. He was disgusted that his algorithm > produced garbage, which means, the error was unacceptable. Mat be it was 1%, > may be 80%, I don't, that was his decision, that the result was > unacceptable. The bug description assumes the problem was in the last bit, > which means, he wanted precision higher than the machine precision. >
What programmer? What algorithm? As far as I can tell, this was found when testing a library explicitly for accuracy, not in an application, so your argument doesn't apply.
