240
edits
FAQ: Difference between revisions
Advertised the interval package in the FAQ
(Advertised the interval package in the FAQ) |
|||
| Line 590: | Line 590: | ||
Like death and taxes, rounding errors are a fact of life. You cannot avoid them. You can only move a rounding error from one part of a computation to another, or you can use more precision and delay the rounding error. One way to delay the rounding error is to use arbitrary precision arithmetic, which is inevitably slower as it has to be implemented in software instead of hardware. You may use the vpa function from the symbolic package for this purpose. | Like death and taxes, rounding errors are a fact of life. You cannot avoid them. You can only move a rounding error from one part of a computation to another, or you can use more precision and delay the rounding error. One way to delay the rounding error is to use arbitrary precision arithmetic, which is inevitably slower as it has to be implemented in software instead of hardware. You may use the vpa function from the symbolic package for this purpose. | ||
Another approach to the problem is interval arithmetic with the [[Interval package]]. Then, the exact result would always be enclosed by two binary floats. Again, this is slower since only the most basic interval arithmetic operations can be performed in hardware. | |||
To learn more about floating point arithmetic, consult [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point_arithmetic its Wikipedia article] or the classical reference [http://floating-point-gui.de/ What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating Point Arithmetic]. | To learn more about floating point arithmetic, consult [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point_arithmetic its Wikipedia article] or the classical reference [http://floating-point-gui.de/ What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating Point Arithmetic]. | ||