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[mathcad] Re: Rounding up/down error
| [mathcad] Re: Rounding up/down error |
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Author: Shiner Adrian
Posted: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 18:36:06 +0200
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Good point Chris. If the application is in engineering then the precision of
results are sufficient that lead to the physical product being to
requirements. As the engineer said to the mathematician in a certain
competition to win a lady's favour "I can get close enough for all practical
purposes".
I occasionally see building dimensions shown on drawings to decimal parts of
a millimetre! An understanding of the technology that you are working with
is always useful in order to avoid such howlers and sources of mirth.
Now if you are intent on calculating down to quantum dimensions then perhaps
its another matter, antimatter or dark matter as the case may be.
Best wishes
Adrian
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Whitford />
Sent: 16 July 2003 17:21
To: Mathcad Discussion List
Subject: [mathcad] Re: Rounding up/down error
I wonder whether some people are missing the point here. There is no law of
nature which says that 0.5 must round up. The IEEE floating point formats
(which the PC FP processor uses) say that 0.5 rounds to the nearest even
integer - 1.5 will round to 2 while 2.5 will also round to 2. But Mathcad
does numerical calculations with real numbers, which, except for special
cases, like integers, are approximated by floating point numbers. If you
are worried about the missing digits, display more of them! If you really
need 0.5 to mean exactly 1/2, you need to use the symbolic processor.
Chris
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