Re: Accuracy and Precision
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg36982] Re: Accuracy and Precision
- From: pkosta2002 at yahoo.com (Peter Kosta)
- Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 05:01:20 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <anggkb$prg$1@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Andrzej Kozlowski <andrzej at platon.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp> wrote in message news:<anggkb$prg$1 at smc.vnet.net>... > The last part of my message you are quoting was completely wrong, as > was pointed out by Allan Hayes. Mathematica does not track precision of > machine arithmetic computations. In order for Mathematica to give > reliable information about the precision of a computation you have to > explicitly set the precision of all the numerical quantities. > > Your own example at the bottom simply shows you have not understood the > evaluation mechanism of Mathematica. Just opposite, thanks to you and other participants, I completely understood it. SetAccuracy just takes anything and calls it accurate. This behavior is useless if not stupid. It was apparently intended by Mathematica developers but that doesn't make it right. On a side note, I hate the argument "It is descibed in the manual, therefore it is correct". "Legal" doesn't mean right. Besides there is no supreme court here to overrule some stupid law. :-) PK > > [...]