On Feb 21, 2007, at 14:54 , Christopher Barker wrote: > Anne Archibald wrote: >> Or, to see more clearly, try taking (on a pocket calculator, say) >> sin(3.14) (or even sin(pi)). > > This is an interesting point. I took a class from William Kahan once > (pass/fail, thank god!), and one question he posed to us was: > > How many digits of pi is used in an HP calculator?
FWIW, There are two data types for reals (at least on the HP 28 and 48 series, and others in that line): a 12 decimal digit real used for communicating with the user, and an extended 15 decimal digit real used internally. All calculations are done in base 10. The exponent e for the 12-digit real is in the range -500 < e < 500, and for the 15-digit, -50000 < e < 50000. AFAIK, most of HP's calculators are like this. -- |>|\/|< /------------------------------------------------------------------\ |David M. Cooke http://arbutus.physics.mcmaster.ca/dmc/ |[EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Numpy-discussion mailing list Numpy-discussion@scipy.org http://projects.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
