Not too many years ago we used massive tables of logs, sin etc, in enormous
volumes. These also gave ways ways to interpolate between entries.
But more interestingly the tables were supposed to be 'new' but some
enterprising types were able to show that there were errors in the tables,
and then tracked these errors back as far as 100 years.
There will never be a decent answer to 'precision', and those who need it
must prepare for long run times, with their own code. But also, over the
years, I have often seen a demand for an accuracy that is hopeless given
the starting point of the problem (my first exposure being a request for
results to 8 places when the original data was, at best, 4 places).
When faced with a demand for 10^200 in computer hardware the question can
often be 'do you really know what your problem is? and will the final
results have any significant digits at all?'
RS
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