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Re: Would You Believe?



Rick raises an interesting point, one that affected users from
the deep past who attempted integer arithmetic on machines of limited
precision.
How would I best present a result representing this difference:
1,234,567 - 1,234,566
assuming the operands were the result of operations on a machine
that we will say provided an uncertain 7th decimal digit?
[3...-1] or 1 + - 2 or what?

Brian

At 20:54 8/26/99 -0500, Rick Tarara wrote:
It's also not trivial to program all the rules--especially for a calculator.
I've tried to do so in my fitting package ...
Add in the rules for addition, subtraction,
exponentiation, etc. and you would need quite a few lines of code...
Rick


Paul O Johnson writes,

"What I still don't understand is why the calculator
manufacturers cannot design their machines to display
the answers with the correct number of SD based on
the precision of the factors entered.










brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK