On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 5:52 PM Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 07, 2018 at 10:08:50PM +0000, Neil Girdhar wrote: > > > Oh, and to answer your specific question, I want to change the way > > arithmetic is done. I want it to be done in a different radix. > > Why? > > There are clear advantages to floating point arithmetic done in base 2 > (speed, minimum possible rounding error, least amount of wobble), and a > different advantage to floating point done in base 10 (matches exactly > the standard decimal notation used by humans with no conversion error), > Outside of those two bases, arithmetic done in any other base is going > to combine the worst of both: > > - slower; > - larger errors when converting from decimal numbers (in general); > - larger rounding errors; > - larger wobble; > I don't see why it would have any of those problems. Base 10 isn't special in any way. > > with no corresponding advantages unless your data is coming to you in > arbitrary bases. > Right, I was playing with this problem ( https://brilliant.org/weekly-problems/2017-10-02/advanced/?problem=no-computer-needed) and wanted to work in base 2. I realize it's niche, but it's not exactly a significant change to the interface even if it's a big change to the implementation. > > Doing floating point arithmetic in decimal is already slower and less > accurate than doing it in binary. I'd like to hear more about your > use-case for doing it in base 19 or base 7, say, but I would have to > guess that it is likely to be such a niche use-case that this > functionality doesn't belong in the standard library. > > > -- > Steve > _______________________________________________ > Python-ideas mailing list > Python-ideas@python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas > Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/ > > -- > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "python-ideas" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/python-ideas/twWEvFwahaQ/unsubscribe. > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > python-ideas+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >
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