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However, there are some downsides of floating point arithmetic in practice, which will eventually produce errors in computations. | However, there are some downsides of floating point arithmetic in practice, which will eventually produce errors in computations. | ||
* Floating point arithmetic is often used mindlessly by developers. [http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html] | * Floating point arithmetic is often used mindlessly by developers. [http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html] [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/Mindless.pdf] | ||
* The binary data types categorically are not suitable for doing financial computations. Very often representational errors are introduced when using “real world” decimal numbers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_computer] | * The binary data types categorically are not suitable for doing financial computations. Very often representational errors are introduced when using “real world” decimal numbers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_computer] | ||
* Even if the developer would be proficient, most developing environments / technologies limit floating point arithmetic capabilities to a very limited subset of IEEE 754: Only one or two data types, no rounding modes, … [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/JAVAhurt.pdf] | * Even if the developer would be proficient, most developing environments / technologies limit floating point arithmetic capabilities to a very limited subset of IEEE 754: Only one or two data types, no rounding modes, … [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/JAVAhurt.pdf] |
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