Doug,
Borrowing from the fp_equal() subroutine used to compare whether two
floating-point numbers are equal, to a particular number of decimal places,
found at:
http://perldoc.perl.org/perlop.html#Floating-point-Arithmetic
you could test whether the values of $molt4 and $actualM rounded to the desired
precision (e.g., 3 decimal places) are the same, and if so, set the
$percenterror to 0, otherwise calculate $percenterror, using the method you
used in your example.
$precision = 3;
if (&roundto($molt4,$precision) eq &roundto($actualM,$precision)) {
$percenterror = 0;
} else {
$percenterror=abs($molt4-$actualM)*100/$actualM;
}
For any user supplied input you should also validate that the experimental data
are reasonable. Note: you could also set an absolute tolerance for the case
where the $percenterror is 0, and use a relative tolerance otherwise. (Note:
any tolerance defined within the problem could be overridden within a course).
if (&roundto($molt4,$precision) eq &roundto($actualM,$precision)) {
$temp = 0;
$percenterror = 0;
$tol = 0.1;
} else {
$tol = '5%';
$temp = $molt4-$actualM;
$percenterror=abs($molt4-$actualM)*100/$actualM;
}
<numericalresponse format="3s" answer="$percenterror" id="11">
<responseparam name="tol" type="tolerance" default="$tol"
description="Numerical Tolerance" />
<responseparam name="sig" type="int_range" default="3,4"
description="Significant Digits" />
<textline readonly="no" />
</numericalresponse>
Stuart Raeburn
LON-CAPA Academic Consortium
________________________________________
From: LON-CAPA-users <[email protected]> on behalf of
Mills, Douglas G <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2019 4:55 PM
To: Discussion list for LON-CAPA users
Cc: Mills, Douglas G
Subject: [LON-CAPA-users] How Best to Resolve Floating Point Issues?
Hi All,
I've run into a situation where the binary representation of base 10 numbers is
catching up to us for a very small percentage of our students. To illustrate
this I've created a public problem demonstrating the issue. Unlike the problems
the students get this one, for the sake of demonstration, walks you through the
calculations but uses the exact same numbers that one of our students had to
work with resulting in a case where what should be zero is not equal to zero.
What's the best way of preventing this from happening? (The source code is open
also in case you want to have a look but it's pretty well spelled out in the
problem itself for demonstration purposes).
https://access3.lon-capa.illinois.edu/res/uiuc/dmills/scratchwork/FloatingPointIssueDemo.problem<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://access3.lon-capa.illinois.edu/res/uiuc/dmills/scratchwork/FloatingPointIssueDemo.problem__;!ioFpBMP7lJU!kYg_ctrV6fkf5-Q0k15HPZw7eDzJHG_oXmJmgLbFYGCVB4UljJ9noqPl_BVJGg$>
Thanks in advance and, on that topic, Happy Thanksgiving!
Doug
DOUGLAS G MILLS
Director of Instructional Technology
Department of Chemistry
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Chemistry Annex Box A2
601 S. Mathews | M/C 712
Urbana, IL 61801
217.244.5739 | fax: 217.244.8029 |
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
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