Why Mathematica does not issue a warning when the calculations are losing so much precision that the results are not anymore useful?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg117499] Why Mathematica does not issue a warning when the calculations are losing so much precision that the results are not anymore useful?
- From: John Travolta Sardus <pireddag at hotmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2011 06:13:24 -0500 (EST)
With Mathematica 8.0.1 N[FractionalPart[(6 + Sqrt[2])^20]] Result: -160. Is it a problem for all numerical software being able to recognize when these calculations cannot be performed with the given machine accuracy? Does this happen in this case only (where a wrong result is easily recognized) or in other cases too? Thanks for any answer, Giovanni