Sam Griff <sgrif...@gmail.com> writes: > Granted it is a very small amount to be off by > the being off by a small amount is a result of the way floating point numbers (decimal) are stored in the computer's memory (binary).
whereas integers are easy: 1 dec 0001 bin 5 dec 0101 bin 9 dec 1001 bin stuff like 3.1416 require a more imaginative effort that will not be an exact value. it'll be close enough for practical purpose, but no cigar. the main advantage of floating point is that you have a much larger range available to you admittedly at the expense of some precision. here are some links if you want to explore this further: Floating point - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point Fixed-point arithmetic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_arithmetic Floating point representation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-8fMtUNX1A (there are no doubt better explanations, but this is what i found on short notice). -- in friendship, prad _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
