Re: Would You Believe?

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

Rick raises an interesting point, one that affected users from
 the deep past who attempted integer arithmetic on machines of limited
precision.
   How would I best present a result representing this difference:
1,234,567 - 1,234,566
assuming the operands were the result of operations on a machine
that we will say provided an uncertain 7th decimal digit?
[3...-1] or 1 + - 2 or what?

Brian

At 20:54 8/26/99 -0500, Rick Tarara wrote:
> It's also not trivial to program all the rules--especially for a calculator.
> I've tried to do so in my fitting package ...
> Add in the rules for addition, subtraction,
> exponentiation, etc. and you would need quite a few lines of code...
> Rick

> > Paul O Johnson writes,
> >
> > "What I still don't understand is why the calculator
> > manufacturers cannot design their machines to display
> > the answers with the correct number of SD based on
> > the precision of the factors entered.










brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK