You've got upper and lower bounds - maybe you could do a binary search to find the max exactly? It should only take the same number of steps again...
On 9/25/07, Terry Carroll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 24 Sep 2007, Christopher Spears wrote: > > > How can I find the largest float and complex numbers? > > That's an interesting question.. > > I just tried this: > > x = 2.0 > while True: > x = x*2 > print x > if repr(x) == "1.#INF": break > > to just keep doubling X until Python began representing it as infinity. > My output: > > 4.0 > 8.0 > 16.0 > 32.0 > 64.0 > 128.0 > . . . > 137438953472.0 > 274877906944.0 > 549755813888.0 > 1.09951162778e+012 > 2.19902325555e+012 > 4.3980465111e+012 > . . . > 2.24711641858e+307 > 4.49423283716e+307 > 8.98846567431e+307 > 1.#INF > > So I'd say, the answer is somewhere between 8.98846567431e+307 and double > that. > > On complex numbers, I'm not so sure. My math is rusty. Is there a concept > of "greater than" or "largest" in complex numbers on different axis? > Which is larger, 4+2i or 2+4i? > > >>> complex(4,2) > (4+2j) > >>> complex(2,4) > (2+4j) > >>> complex(4,2) > complex(2,4) > Traceback (most recent call last): > File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> > TypeError: no ordering relation is defined for complex numbers > > _______________________________________________ > Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor > _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
