I may take you up on this challenge- I've got this strange masochistic urge to see if ML has the same restriction. I seem to recall proving e^i to an arbitrary significant digit, so Pi shouldn't be too much different.
Michael Krotscheck Senior Developer RESOURCE INTERACTIVE <http://www.resource.com/> www.resource.com <http://www.resource.com> [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ________________________________ From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Samuel R. Neff Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2007 11:30 PM To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [flexcoders] Math.cos...? It's not sloppy, it's just how floating point numbers work. Try the same thing in other programming languages and you still will not get zero (unless they round the output). For example, .NET reports the result as 6.12303176911189E-17. Sam ------------------------------------------- We're Hiring! Seeking a passionate developer to join our team building Flex based products. Position is in the Washington D.C. metro area. If interested contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________ From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Krotscheck Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2007 5:19 PM To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [flexcoders] Math.cos...? The documentation's actually fairly clear on this: "The cosine of a 90 degree angle is zero, but because of the inherent inaccuracy of decimal calculations using binary numbers, Flash Player will report a number extremely close to, but not exactly equal to, zero." Nevertheless, it seems... sloppy to me. Michael Krotscheck Senior Developer ________________________________ From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Troy Gilbert Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2007 5:15 PM To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [flexcoders] Math.cos...? > Why does Math.cos(Math.PI/2) not return zero? Round-off error in the Math libs? It does return a value very close to 0 (1.7xe-17). Troy.
