[erlang-questions] Maths Problem -> 2452.45*100. = 245244.99999999997

[I-T]

You might want to try:-

https://github.com/tim/erlang-decimal

Run

Iqbal-Bhatti:ebin afrobeard$ erl
Erlang R13B03 (erts-5.7.4) [source] [smp:4:4] [rq:4] [async-threads:0]
[kernel-poll:false]

Eshell V5.7.4  (abort with ^G)
1> decimal:multiply("2452.45", "100").
{0,24524500,-2}
2>

Best Regards,


On 27 November 2013 09:35, Michael Turner
<michael.eugene.turner@REDACTED>wrote:

> Gee, now might be a good time to bore everyone with a war story: a
> startup I once worked for independently /pre/-invented the Pentium
> Floating Point Bug, against my strenuous protests. How could this
> happen, I wondered, as I was losing the battle for IEEE-standard
> purity? Maybe, I thought, it's because we're a small company that
> can't afford to hire experts to ratify my opinion?
>
> We were using Weitek FPU adder and multiplier chips in our hardware,
> and I implemented floating point division the way they said to do it -
> the right way. Tried to, that is. I got overruled.
>
> Not too many years later, for the Pentium design, Intel acquired
> Weitek's IP. Then they introduced very similar mistakes in floating
> point arithmetic, through no fault of Weitek. Ours, at least, could
> have been patched by sending customers a new ROM to socket. Intel's
> errors went onto a single chip.
>
> What I learned about IEEE floating point arithmetic is that if you try
> to clean up floating point "errors" one way, you just squeeze the
> errors out some place else.
>
> What I learned about people is that Size Doesn't Matter.
>
> The proximate provocation in both cases: somebody didn't like how the
> number printed. I first saw "errors" like when I was in high school,
> programming in Dartmouth BASIC. I was told, "floating point is like
> that - if it weren't that, it would be something worse." So I was
> prepared. But lots of people now graduate with C.S. degrees who aren't
> prepared.
>
>
> Regards,
> Michael Turner
> Executive Director
> Project Persephone
> K-1 bldg 3F
> 7-2-6 Nishishinjuku
> Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0023
> Tel: +81 (3) 6890-1140
> Fax: +81 (3) 6890-1158
> Mobile: +81 (90) 5203-8682
> turner@REDACTED
> http://www.projectpersephone.org/
>
> "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
> together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Richard A. O'Keefe <ok@REDACTED>
> wrote:
> >
> > On 27/11/2013, at 3:01 PM, Sanath Prasanna wrote:
> >
> >> I accepted your comment. But generally we expected full value. I did
> same in another scripting language like php. It is given correct result.
> >
> > Wrong.  It *calculated* the same number as Erlang did,
> > but then it *displayed* a different number, a rounded version.
> >
> > m% cat >foo.php
> > <?php
> > $a = 2452.45*100;
> > echo $a; echo "\n";
> > $a = $a - 245245.0;
> > echo $a; echo "\n";
> > exit;
> > ?>
> > <EOF>
> > m% php foo.php
> > 245245
> > -2.9103830456734E-11
> >
> > We see from this that while the number *displays as*
> > 245245, it is not *equal to* 245245.
> >
> > As I said, PHP computed *exactly* the same answer as Erlang.
> > Who is this "we" who "expect full value"?
> > This is floating-point arithmetic, not rational arithmetic.
> >
> > (Our 2nd year students are taught this stuff, but it doesn't
> > really take.  In 3rd year they have an exercise they have to
> > do where they start to really understand that floating point
> > arithmetic is *not* arithmetic on the mathematical real
> > numbers, but a different mathematical system which sort of
> > approximates the algebra of the reals.  They learn that
> > adding up an array of numbers from left to right generally
> > gives you a different answer from adding up from right to
> > left, for example.)
> >
> > Numbers in IEEE floating point arithmetic are precise,
> > but are bounded in their precision, and arithmetic operations
> > on them (including conversion between decimal and binary)
> > have to round their answers to something that is representable.
> > There's a rounding in the conversion of 2452.45 to binary,
> > and then the multiplication incurs another rounding.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > erlang-questions mailing list
> > erlang-questions@REDACTED
> > http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
> _______________________________________________
> erlang-questions mailing list
> erlang-questions@REDACTED
> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>



-- 
Iqbal Talaat Bhatti

"If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally
astound ourselves." - Thomas Edison
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/attachments/20131127/5704904e/attachment.htm>