Re: with machine-precision input
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg128403] Re: with machine-precision input
- From: Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net>
- Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 03:22:56 -0400 (EDT)
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- Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@wolfram.com
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On 10/14/12 at 11:40 PM, fateman at cs.berkeley.edu (Richard Fateman) wrote: >try this on Mathematica 8: >q = 429515858585961022071539/6922263581864661506963; >Note that q was chosen so that >Rationalize[N[q,45],0] == q. Not here: In[1]:= q = 429515858585961022071539/6922263581864661506963; Rationalize[N[q, 45], 0] == q Out[2]= False but In[4]:= Rationalize[N[q, 45]] == q Out[4]= True >Peculiarly, then SetPrecision[N[q,45],100]-N[q,100] is not zero but >about -3.9E-59 Why would you expect this to be zero? Per the documentation: SetPrecision will first expose any hidden extra digits in the internal binary representation of a number, and, only after these are exhausted, add trailing zeros. So unless q can be exactly expressed with 45 digits there will be a non-zero difference. Here: In[4]:= SetPrecision[N[q, 45], 100] - N[q, 100] Out[4]= 3.3475286706596422492*10^-78 but note: In[5]:= SetPrecision[N[q, 45], 100] - N[q, 45] Out[5]= 0.*10^-44 as it should. And here is: In[6]:= $Version Out[6]= 8.0 for Mac OS X x86 (64-bit) (October 5, 2011)