>> can you explain that a little more detailed?
>> Perhaps I miss the background knowledge - but it seems just absurd
to me.
>>
>> 0.1+0.1+0.1 is 0.3 - there is no rounding involved, is there?
>>
>> why is
>> x <- 0.1 + 0.1 +0.1
>> not equal to
>> y <- 0.3
>
> Remember that this is in BINARY arithmetic. It's really not any
stranger
> than the fact that 1/3 + 1/3 != 2/3 in finite accuracy decimal
arithmetic
> (0.33333 + 0.33333 = 0.66666 != 0.66667).
A nice description of this is in section 2.2.4 of Braun and Murdoch's
book.
They give a striking example.
> x <- 1:11
> mean(x)
[1] 6
> var(x)
[1] 11
> sum( (x - mean(x))^2) / 10 # two-pass formula for mean
[1] 11
> (sum(x^2) - 11 * mean(x)^2) / 10 # one-pass formula for mean
[1] 11
> A <- 1.e10 # add large value to each x_i
> x <- 1:11 + A
> var(x) # R function survives
[1] 11
> sum( (x - mean(x))^2) / 10 # two-pass formula survives
[1] 11
> (sum(x^2) - 11 * mean(x)^2) / 10 # one-pass formula suffers
catastrophic loss of precision!
[1] 0
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