Le 2012-01-13 à 08:05:00, Mathieu Bouchard a écrit :

Neither binary nor decimal representation is more precise than the other, it's just that their precision never matches exactly. 20 bits is slightly less than 6 decimals, whereas 16 decimals is slightly more than 53 bits. Thus you can only preserve precision by using slightly too many digits, otherwise you'll have too few.

erratum : i meant that 20 bits is slightly more than 6 decimals.

20 bits =  6.0205... decimals
24 bits =  7.2247... decimals
53 bits = 15.9545... decimals

(And by «decimal» here, I mean all significant digits, not the other meaning of the word)

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| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC
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