[PD] Some more float weirdness/fun

[Thomas Mayer]

On 08.03.2012 20:47, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Roman Haefeli <reduzent at gmail.com>
>> To: pd-list at iem.at
>> Cc: 
>> Sent: Thursday, March 8, 2012 1:52 PM
>> Subject: Re: [PD] Some more float weirdness/fun
>>
>> On Thu, 2012-03-08 at 16:23 +0100, Lorenzo Sutton wrote:
>>> Or, beware of trying to compare floats with [==] ...
>>>
>>> Lorenzo.
>>
>> That's a good example of the implications inherent in floats. What you
>> call a work-around is actually the correct solution. When counting, make
>> sure you count with something that can precisely represented by floats,
>> otherwise the error will grow with each iteration. Integers up to
>> 1.6*10^7 meet that criterion.
>>
>> Roman
> 
> Is this still an issue when float precision is 64-bit?

The issue will arise later, because you have two a many bits for
representing your value, but the problem still exists.

As Pd is a programming language, this is good read on the issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point#IEEE_754:_floating_point_in_modern_computers
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html

or to make the wording quotable:
https://twitter.com/#!/tomscott/status/174143430170120192

Best regards,
Thomas
-- 
"As long as people kept worrying that the machines were taking over,
they wouldn't notice what was really happening. Which was that the
programmers were taking over." (Robert Anton Wilson - The Homing Pidgeons)
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