On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 6:36 PM Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 10:08 AM, Neil Girdhar <mistersh...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > > On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 5:52 PM Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info> > wrote: > >> > >> - 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. > > Base 10 *is* special, because it corresponds to what humans use. In > binary floating-point, you get weird results (by human standards) like > 0.1+0.2 not being 0.3; that doesn't happen in decimal. > > There is no error when converting from a string of decimal digits to a > decimal.Decimal, so presumably to avoid error, you'd have to work with > digits in the same base. The rounding errors and wobble are by > comparison with binary; you get the same problems in any other base, > without the benefit of human-friendly behaviour. > I see your list was about converting to and from base 10. That wasn't really intended in my proposal. I meant wholly working in another base. In that sense, 10 isn't particularly "fast, error-free, better at rounding, etc." > > > 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. > > You should be able to use the native float type for binary > floating-point. But the whole point of that challenge is that you > shouldn't need a computer. > Yeah, I know, but I wanted to play with it. Anyway, native floats don't help. > > ChrisA > _______________________________________________ > 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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