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From: asmith@acorn.co.uk (Andy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: How accurate is the 48??
Message-ID: <7174@acorn.co.uk>
Date: 20 May 91 15:02:03 GMT
Article-I.D.: acorn.7174
Sender: asmith@acorn.co.uk
Distribution: comp
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, England
Lines: 15

There is no doubt that the 28S and the 48SX are brilliant calculators, but
one thing still puzzles me. Certainly with the 28S, although much better
than most calculators (3/3=1, 2/3*3=1) it is still not "accurate" due to the
limitations of how it stores numbers. 1/3*3 still gives 0.999999999. Does
the 48 still suffer from this limitation?

A calculator that I wrote for the Archimedes uses 64 bit Floating point, but
I cheat and round numbers up or down on the last digit of the calculation.
Could a similar idea not be used on the 48? Could numbers tending to an
integer be rounded up or down on the 16th or so decimal place if that
number were a 9 or a 1 respectively??

What say you??

Andy