Re: Base 10 to Base 2 conversion error ?
- To: mathgroup at christensen.cybernetics.net
- Subject: [mg1778] Re: Base 10 to Base 2 conversion error ?
- From: dchua at abel.math.harvard.edu (David Chua)
- Date: Sun, 30 Jul 1995 21:33:43 -0400
- Organization: Anarchists Inc.
>Well, there are only 100^2 cases, so it's fairly easy to write a >mathematica notebook that will mechanically test all cases. It may take >all night to run, but you won't need to catch a mathematician. Whoa! Just see if 0.01 works, which it doesn't. You need 2^(-n) to divide 0.01 for some positive integer n. (To see this: Flip things over and the condition is 100 be a factor of 2^n, which won't happen since powers of 2 end in 2, 4, 6 or 8; never 0.) >Is it really necessary to be accurate to the penny? Why isn't one part >in a billion accurate enough? Even if they're playing with billions of dollars, I would think that Mathematica can use enough precision to prevent money loss. Hope this helps.