On 13/01/2020 6:33 p.m., Wright, Erik Scott wrote:
This struck me as incorrect:
choose(3.999999, 4)
[1] 0.9999979
choose(3.9999999, 4)
[1] 0
choose(4, 4)
[1] 1
choose(4.0000001, 4)
[1] 4
choose(4.000001, 4)
[1] 1.000002
Should base::choose(n, k) check whether n is within machine precision of k and
return 1?
I don't think that's the solution. The current code checks whether n is
within 1e-7 of an integer; if it is and n-k is smaller than k, it
computes choose(n, n-k) instead. The problem in your second example is
that n-k < 0 which implies the answer should be zero. In the 4th
example n-k > 0 but it is not an integer; the code rounds k to an
integer, but the transformation to n-k happens after that, so the code
ends up working with a non-integer.
I think a solution would be to force n to be an integer if it is very
close to one.
I note that the source to lchoose() seems to already do this: it
handles your examples nicely.
Duncan Murdoch
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