According to what I was taught in college, your answer is only good to the least significant digit. In otherwords if one variable has two decimal places and the other has five, your answer will only be accurate to two decimal places.
-----Original Message----- From: Mark E. Zawadzki [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, September 20, 2002 7:51 AM To: JDJList Subject: [jdjlist] Re: Double multiplication Agreed - and as a scientific programmer, a bit of advice - if you have a lot of numbers to the right of the decimal point - you are are most likely using the wrong units. --- Joseph Ottinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Why do I detect a "Java is slow" post in your future? :) As usual, when > you're doing floating point on binary systems, you always have to figure out > if it's *really* important to have the precision... and usually, it isn't. > > I'm sure at this point, people are finding woodwork to crawl out of saying, > "Yes, it is!" - and you're all correct, for you it's important because > you're rocket scientists and all that, and maybe even a financial programmer > or two are finding graves to spin in as well. However... I'd still stand by > the statement that in most cases, the accuracy simply isn't important enough > to justify crippling your program's speed. It's all about the tradeoffs. If > it's all about what you SEE, then format the numbers going out instead. > > >From: "Ivan Bradac" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Reply-To: "JDJList" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >To: "JDJList" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Subject: [jdjlist] Re: Double multiplication > >Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2002 09:34:01 +0200 > > > >Hi all > > > >thanks for all your answers. I will try to switch to BigDecimal. > > ----------------------------------------------- > Joseph B. Ottinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://enigmastation.com IT Consultant > > _________________________________________________________________ > Join the world's largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. > http://www.hotmail.com > > > To change your JDJList options, please visit: http://www.sys-con.com/java/list.cfm ===== Mark Zawadzki Performance Engineer/DBA/Programmer extraordinaire' [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning" Robert Cringle (columnist, author, host of "Triumph of the Nerds") __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com To change your JDJList options, please visit: http://www.sys-con.com/java/list.cfm To change your JDJList options, please visit: http://www.sys-con.com/java/list.cfm
