Re: Bug in 5.1??
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg54386] Re: [mg54349] Bug in 5.1??
- From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl>
- Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 00:07:47 -0500 (EST)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
These are just a few examples of the strange behaviour of Mathematica's so called "significance arithmetic" at very low precision. These are not bugs but consequences of the way significance arithmetic works. It is not suitable for very low precision computations. This issue has already caused many heated debates on this list in the past and I do not wish to enter another. The best way to deal with this is not to use low precision arithmetic for such purposes. It is never needed. Andrzej Kozlowski On 19 Feb 2005, at 08:31, Gehrmann, James E wrote: > I'm running Mathematica v. 5.1 under WinXP and had the following > interaction with Mathematica: > > 5>0 > > True > > 5.>0 > > True > > N[5]>0 > > True > > N[5,3]>0 > > True > > N[5,2]>0 > > False > > N[50000,2]>0 > > False > > Are the last two results a bug or am I not understanding the N > function? > > Thanks for you help. > >