Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!uunet!mstan!amull From: amull@Morgan.COM (Andrew P. Mullhaupt) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Killer Micro II Message-ID: <1621@s6.Morgan.COM> Date: 3 Sep 90 23:20:38 GMT References: <527@llnl.LLNL.GOV> <603@array.UUCP> <2482@l.cc.purdue.edu> Organization: Morgan Stanley & Co. NY, NY Lines: 27 In article , meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner) writes: > Have we actually gotten to the point where we need that much precision > on a day to day basis? I seem to recall that in my numerical analysis > course 12 years ago, that it was said that your average physical > measurement only had 3-5 digits of accuracy. This means that any Enough people will set this one straight for me not to have to comment further... > > There are probably groups that may need such extremes in precision, > but are they really enough to drive the market? Well I would suspect that the financial community will normally require more than 3-5 digits, and I bet we buy more computers than everyone else put together. Now the average financial measurement can live in 7-10 digits, but you have to be careful. If you are working in Yen denominated split adjusted equity prices, (i.e. Tokyo market) you had better be in double precision. Do you really expect someone to want to have to care about this stuff while he's supposed to be thinking about finance? Well the answer is no, he doesn't want to care. So to make everything easy you stay in double precision. And you make sure that your tools (especially things like least squares regression) which a lot of results will depend on, will work to that precision if at all possible. Later, Andrew Mullhaupt