On Dec 7, 12:58 pm, Carl Banks <pavlovevide...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Dec 7, 10:53 am, dbd <d...@ieee.org> wrote: > > ... > > 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
When you implement an algorithm supporting floats (per the OP's post), the expected scale of calculation is the range of floating point numbers. For floating point numbers the intrinsic truncation error is proportional to the value represented over the normalized range of the floating point representation. At absolute values smaller than the normalized range, the truncation has a fixed value. These are not necessarily 'machine' characteristics but the characteristics of the floating point format implemented. A useful description of floating point issues can be found: http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/800-7895/800-7895.pdf Dale B. Dalrymple -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
