in reply to Re^2: Is this odd behavior a floating point problem?
in thread Is this odd behavior a floating point problem?

Yes, I've seen and skimmed this document, but, not to be rude, but I'm not interested in becoming a computer scientist in order to write a script to do basic math. Adding together 0.001 40 times is pretty basic and if my calculator can do it, I not sure I understand why Perl won't.

:) Try site:perlmonks.org What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic and you can learn from others who weren't satisfied with that document

 

Now you say you're studying chemical diffusion so I assume you would have heard of significant figures? Surely your professor, when discussing significant figures, would have explained the basic limitations of adding machines (calculators/computers)?

I was hoping, after reading that document, you would ask explicitly how to round numbers for display purposes in perl.

While you can create a calculator using perl (like Tk::Calculator::RPN::HP ), and expect it to do rounding like your pocket calculator, perl itself, not being a calculator, won't hide the details of floating point arithmetic from you, so it is good knowledge to have.

Any scientist using computers for calculations needs to know the limits of his tools.

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Re^4: Is this odd behavior a floating point problem?
by Anonymous Monk on Aug 22, 2012 at 13:10 UTC
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