Re: a bug in RealDigits? Mathematica 5.0
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg45235] Re: a bug in RealDigits? Mathematica 5.0
- From: Dr Bob <drbob at bigfoot.com>
- Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 05:13:29 -0500 (EST)
- References: <20031221103849.93217.qmail@web21601.mail.yahoo.com>
- Reply-to: drbob at bigfoot.com
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
IMHO the only way to entirely eliminate the mismatch between machine precision and numbers with other precisions is not to use the machine's floating point arithmetic at all. For most purposes -- perhaps all of MY purposes -- that might be acceptable. But some people sometimes want (or need?) the speed machine arithmetic allows. One option is to make it more explicit what we're doing when we enter a number -- by REQUIRING us to specify how many digits we want to trust. But that can be simply inconvenient. In this case, all Steve needed to do was add a 0 at the end. Bobby