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Re: Exact real numbers

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg50551] Re: Exact real numbers
• From: Paul Abbott <paul at physics.uwa.edu.au>
• Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 05:19:43 -0400 (EDT)
• Organization: The University of Western Australia
• References: <chmntb$9sf$1@smc.vnet.net>
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

In article <chmntb$9sf$1 at smc.vnet.net>,
 Ross Sean Civ AFRL/DELO <sean.ross at kirtland.af.mil> wrote:

> I have been having an on-going problem with real numbers in Mathematica that
> has come up again.  In short, I can find no way of "rounding" a number in
> Mathematica.  To me, when I say, round 1.56012309843 to three decimal
> places, I want the result to be 1.560 exactly.  No hanging 00000000001's .

You could achieve this using, say,

  myRound[x_?NumericQ, n_:3] := SetPrecision[ Round[10^n x]/10^n, n + 1]

to round, by default, to 3 decimal places, but this would invoke 
arbitrary precision arithmetic, which is usually undesirable.

> The reason for this is that I need to do 3-D logic involving the location of
> points in space.  I don't like getting faked out by numbers that ought to be
> the same but are slighly unequal due to rounding errors. 

There is no need to use Round if your goal is to test for equality. Use 
Chop instead. For example,

  Compare[a_, b_, n_:3] := Chop[a - b, 5 10^(-n-1)] == 0

  Compare[1.56012309843, 1.560]
  True

  Compare[1.56012309843, 1.561]
  False

  Compare[1.56012309843, 1.561, 2]
  True

This avoids the need for arbitrary precision arithmetic.

Cheers,
Paul

-- 
Paul Abbott                                   Phone: +61 8 9380 2734
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