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RE: MemberQ

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg68528] RE: [mg68503] MemberQ
• From: "Erickson Paul-CPTP18" <Paul.Erickson at Motorola.com>
• Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 04:18:38 -0400 (EDT)
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Bruce,

In[2]:=
Range[0., 1., .1][[8]] - .7
Out[2]=
1.1102230246251565x10^-16

Looks like ye old precision problem of accumulated error. That is 7
increments of 0.1 as a real machine precision number is not equal to
0.7.

One of probably many ways around this would be to wrap Range with a
rounding function like Rationalize and then convert each element
separately back to machine precision:
In[9]:=
MemberQ[ N[ Rationalize[ Range[0., 1., .1] ] ], .7]
Out[9]=
True

Another is of course to normalize to integers so as to avoid the problem
in the first place.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Colletti [mailto:vze269bv at verizon.net] 
To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
Subject: [mg68528] [mg68503] MemberQ

Re Mathematica 5.2.0.0.

Since 0.7 is in the set {0.0, 0.1, 0.2,..., 0.9, 1.0}, why does
MemberQ[Range[0., 1., .1], .7] return False?
 
Thankx.

Bruce