On Dec 7, 10:53 am, dbd <d...@ieee.org> wrote: > On Dec 7, 4:28 am, sturlamolden <sturlamol...@yahoo.no> wrote: > > > ... > > > You don't understand this at all do you? > > > If you have a sine wave with an amplitude less than the truncation > > error, it will always be approximately equal to zero. > > > Numerical maths is about approximations, not symbolic equalities. > > > > 1.0 + eps is the smallest value greater than 1.0, distinguishable from > > > 1.0. > > > Which is the reason 0.5*eps*sin(x) is never distinguishable from 0. > > ... > > A calculated value of 0.5*eps*sin(x) has a truncation error on the > order of eps squared. 0.5*eps and 0.495*eps are readily distinguished > (well, at least for values of eps << 0.01 :). > > At least one of us doesn't understand floating point.
You're talking about machine epsilon? I think everyone else here is talking about a number that is small relative to the expected smallest scale of the calculation. Carl Banks -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
