In the early days there was no floating point hardware. So all our
software had to plan for and allow a moving decimal point. So you could
have as much precision as you wanted (and in fact I had some software for
1500 digit work), but it was gratefully given up with the arrival of
floating point hardware. Even with the loss of some accuracy.
On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, Dan Bron wrote:
John,
Thanks for the examples.
I know there a huge differences between int and flop math, but intuitively I
cannot understand __why__.
Why should it be that flop + is not associative? If we know precisely how many
digits req'd for arbitary-length int ^ , why is it not so for flop ^ ? Why
is the singles-decimal place in a 6-digit int more important than the
hundred-thousandths decimal place in a flop between 1 and 10? Why is it easier
to preserve? Where is the magic hiding?
-Dan
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