[Numpy-discussion] Re: [Matrix-SIG] An Experiment in code-cleanup.
skaller
skaller at maxtal.com.au
Wed Feb 9 17:04:13 EST 2000
Konrad Hinsen wrote:
>
> > silently). Consider a function
> >
> > k0 = 100
> > k = 99
> > while k < k0:
> > ..
> > k0 = k
> > k = ...
> >
> > which refines a calculation until the measure k stops decreasing.
> > This algorithm may terminate when k is a float, but _fail_ when
> > k is a double -- the extra precision may cause the algorithm
>
> I'd call this a buggy implementation. Convergence criteria should be
> explicit and not rely on the internal representation of data
> types.
> If you care at all about portability, you shouldn't even think about
> this.
But sometimes you DON'T care about portability.
Sometimes, you want the best result the architecture can support,
and so you need to perform a portable computation of an architecture
dependent value.
--
John (Max) Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
10/1 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia voice: 61-2-9660-0850
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
download: ftp://ftp.cs.usyd.edu/au/jskaller
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