On Thu, Feb 28, 2002 at 10:18:45AM +0000, David Chan wrote: > On Wed, Feb 27, 2002 at 09:35:13PM +0000, Nicholas Clark wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 11:17:55AM +0000, Alex Gough wrote: > > > Yes, at some point allowing 10**222222222222222222222, is just silly, > > > and I doubt the potentional applications are numerous enough to > > > warrant trying it. So long as we're clear about what the limits are, > > > > about 10**98 particles in the universe, isn't it? > > How many real world calculations seriously need numbers considerably > > larger than that? > > Remember that many important calculations are not "real world". For > instance, numbers bigger than 10**98 are used routinely in cryptography > (though not bigger than 10**2147483648, which is your point, I think). > > I'm sure you could, in theory, get numbers that high when dealing with > statistical stuff. But if people say it hardly ever happens in > practice, then I'm sure they're right.
Eg: The size of the space of configurations of a simple model of magnetism (the Ising model) would be 2**V where V is the number of sites of some lattice. "Very nearly all" of them are pathological special cases, though. Such models are quite common in simulation, but only a newbie would approach them in a manner where that number actually appeared. I'd agree with all of the above - come up with some vaguely sensible limit and make it clear in the documentation what the limit is. Ben
