Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site phri.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!pesnta!phri!roy From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: Re: C Floating point arithmetic Message-ID: <2031@phri.UUCP> Date: Tue, 26-Nov-85 10:25:55 EST Article-I.D.: phri.2031 Posted: Tue Nov 26 10:25:55 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 28-Nov-85 03:45:20 EST References: <706@lasspvax.UUCP> <4614@alice.UUCP> <793@umd5.UUCP> <42@brl-tgr.ARPA> Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY) Lines: 15 > [...] in most cases where the loss of speed might really matter, double > precision is usually needed anyway to get meaningful results. Some > people, though, judge code more on how fast it runs than on whether it > performs a useful function correctly. Bullcookies! A lot of people (like me) work with primary data which is only accurate to 2 or 3 significant digits. It takes a hell of a lot of roundoff error in the 7th decimal place to make any difference in the accuracy of the final result. Why should I pay (in CPU time) for digits 8-15 when I don't need them? Why do you think they make machines with both single and double precision hardware to begin with? -- Roy Smith System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016