Timeline for Is floating point math broken?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 7, 2019 at 5:26 | comment | added | Stephen C | @RonenFestinger - Decimal is NOT more accurate. That is what this answer is saying. For any base you chose, there will be rational numbers (fractions) that give an infinitely repeating digit sequences. For the record, some of first computers did use base 10 representations for numbers, but the pioneering computer hardware designers soon concluded that base 2 was much easier and more efficient to implement. | |
| Mar 26, 2018 at 22:00 | history | edited | user1641172 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 15 characters in body
|
| Mar 25, 2018 at 6:36 | comment | added | Oskar Limka | @RonenFestinger binary arithmetic is easy to implement on computers because it requires only eight basic operations with digits: say $a$, $b$ in $0,1$ all you need to know is $\operatorname{xor}(a,b)$ and $\operatorname{cb}(a,b)$, where xor is exclusive or and cb is the "carry bit" which is $0$ in all cases except when $a=1=b$, in which case we have one (in fact commutativity of all operations saves you $2$ cases and all you need is $6$ rules). Decimal expansion needs $10\times 11$ (in decimal notation) cases to be stored and $10$ different states for each bit and wastes storage on the carry. | |
| Feb 20, 2017 at 8:59 | comment | added | user1641172 | Humans use many bases other than base 10 (decimals), binary being the one we use most for computing.. the 'good reason' is that you simply cant represent every fraction in every base.. | |
| Feb 19, 2017 at 19:27 | comment | added | Ronen Festinger | Since humans use decimal numbers, I see no good reason why the floats are not represented as a decimal by default so we have accurate results. | |
| Jan 7, 2017 at 16:07 | history | edited | Peter Mortensen | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Copy edited. In English, the subjective form of the singular first-person pronoun, "I", is capitalized, along with all its contractions such as I'll and I'm.
|
| Jun 9, 2016 at 16:41 | history | edited | user1641172 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
edited body
|
| Jun 9, 2016 at 16:36 | history | edited | user1641172 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
edited body
|
| Mar 18, 2016 at 0:38 | history | answered | user1641172 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |