On Jul 28, 2006, at 10:35 AM, Peter K. Stys wrote:
Interesting discussion. To muddy the waters further, using
Mathematica:
N[72/2000, 100] (ie calculate to 100 significant digits of precision)
you get:
0.03600000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000
No argument here, 72/2000 is really 0.036 exactly.
As people said, this real number may not be representable exactly as a
binary floating point number, however:
N[72/2000] (calculate to machine precision)
gives 0.036, implying that the machine is indeed able to represent
0.036 exactly.
Yes, Calculator.app shows exactly "0.036" even with 16 digit
precision. Now try "0.036 * 750".
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