Re: Re: floor problems
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg8247] Re: [mg8140] Re: [mg8113] floor problems
- From: seanross at worldnet.att.net
- Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 21:17:04 -0400
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Will Self wrote: > > Hi Sean, I just resubscribed. I think that any reasonable human being > should reasonably expect that Mathematica should give the correct > answers for *both* of those Floor expressions, as indeed my old > version 2.0 does. It is all very well to exhort people to be careful > and be extra-aware, but if one has to go around walking on eggs, then > what becomes of the usefulness of Mathematica? I say, let the blame > rest where it should, on WRI. > > Will I always "walk on eggshells" and never trust a numerical coprocessor or a compiler further than I can spit. We just had a post where someone with a Unix based system does not have the error that your powerPC chip and my Pentium chip do. I don't think this kind of error has anything to do with mathematica, but with the way the numeric coproccessor handles floating point and integer conversions. I think the wolfram people were just talented in exposing the error in the numeric coprocessor.