Hello Niklas, hello everyone,
Niklas Nebel wrote:
Oliver Brinzing wrote:
have a look:
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,563637,00.html
seem's oo has the same problem with:
29513736 * 92842033 = 2740115251665290
Output is rounded to 15 significant digits. That's intended behavior.
Well, 15-digits might have been intended behaviour in the '70s, but is
hardly appropriate in 2008.
I am really amazed, that programs still cling to 15-digits. Well, the
64-bit double precision might limit calculations to ~16-digits, but
professional programs should do better. Even MS Windows calculator
ouperforms both Excel and Calc (as the previous article states).
I sincerely hope that OOo increases the precision, at least if an
operation overflows, Calc should increase the precision to 24-32 digits.
[Most existent processor designs implement the IEEE754 Exceptions,
including the OVERFLOW exception, therefore it is possible to catch such
an overflow. In this case, Calc should either display a warning that the
result is wrong - and offer a robust calculation mode, or just use a
greater precision. Hiding the error is not very rational.]
And there are many other issues. Floating points spring undoubtedly to
mind. I hope that the floating point arithmetic improves drastically, too.
I advise the interested reader to read some of Kahan's papers, see:
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/
[e.g. http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/Mindless.pdf]
[Kahan is the architect of IEEE 754 - he is also known as "The Father of
Floating Point".]
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754r
Sincerely,
Leonard
Niklas
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