I think that when precision is lost, then accuracy is lost and one
should not exaggerate precision or accuracy by advertising what seem
to be significant digits that are actually not significant
Thus whether you are rounding up the hardness of pencil leads or
storing a single precision number in a double precision format, you
should not overstate how significant the digits are.
An integer 1 could be 1.00000000000...
but if you are only 99.99 % sure you might say 1.0000 but no more.
If you say 1.0000000000.... you are overstating your case.
Accuracy will often be lost but by denoting the significance of the
result it can be evaluated.
Donna
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 29-Jun-06, at 3:36 PM, Miller, Raul D wrote:
Donna L.Y. wrote;
I wanted to know the SIGNIFICANT digits. (oddly enough the
subject of my post) and I wanted this to be reflected no matter
what the for of display or internal storage.
Significant for accuracy? Or significant for precision?
In other words: this is indeed a very important issue, but the
relevant details depend on context.
J has a number of features aimed at letting the programmer
express concepts of significant digits, ranging from 9!:11
to dyadic ": and 8!:x
It WOULD be convenient if J could just read my intentions and
intuit what kind of significance is relevant to the problem
I'm trying to address. In J6, however, I have to express
my intentions in code.
--
Raul
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