[Numpy-discussion] please change mean to use dtype=float

[Charles R Harris]

On 9/19/06, Charles R Harris <charlesr.harris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 9/19/06, Sebastian Haase <haase at msg.ucsf.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Travis Oliphant wrote:
> > > Sebastian Haase wrote:
> > >> I still would argue that getting a "good" (smaller rounding errors)
> > answer
> > >> should be the default -- if speed is wanted, then *that* could be
> > still
> > >> specified by explicitly using dtype=float32  (which would also be a
> > possible
> > >> choice for int32 input) .
> > >>
> > > So you are arguing for using long double then.... ;-)
> > >
> > >> In image processing we always want means to be calculated in float64
> > even
> > >> though input data is always float32 (if not uint16).
> > >>
> > >> Also it is simpler to say "float64 is the default" (full stop.) -
> > instead
> > >>
> > >> "float64 is the default unless you have float32"
> > >>
> > > "the type you have is the default except for integers".  Do you really
> > > want float64 to be the default for float96?
> > >
> > > Unless we are going to use long double as the default, then I'm not
> > > convinced that we should special-case the "double" type.
> > >
> > I guess I'm not really aware of the float96 type ...
> > Is that a "machine type" on any system ?  I always thought that -- e.g .
> > coming from C -- double is "as good as it gets"...
> > Who uses float96 ?  I heard somewhere that (some) CPUs use 80bits
> > internally when calculating 64bit double-precision...
> >
> > Is this not going into some academic argument !?
> > For all I know, calculating mean()s (and sum()s, ...) is always done in
> > double precision -- never in single precision, even when the data is in
> > float32.
> >
> > Having float32 be the default for float32 data is just requiring more
> > typing, and more explaining ...  it would compromise numpy usability as
> > a day-to-day replacement for other systems.
> >
> > Sorry, if I'm being ignorant ...
>
>
> I'm going to side with Travis here. It is only a default and easily
> overridden. And yes, there are precisions greater than double. I was using
> quad precision back in the eighties on a VAX for some inherently ill
> conditioned problems. And on my machine long double is 12 bytes.
>

Here is the 754r (revision) spec: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754r

It includes quads (128 bits) and half precision (16 bits) floats. I believe
the latter are used for some imaging stuff, radar for instance, and are also
available in some high end GPUs from Nvidia and other companies. The 80 bit
numbers you refer to were defined as extended precision in the original 754
spec and were mostly intended for temporaries in internal FPU computations.
They have various alignment requirements for efficient use, which is why
they show up as 96 bits (4 byte alignment) and sometimes 128 bits (8 byte
alignment). So actually, float128 would not always distinquish between
extended precision and quad precision.   I see more work for Travis in the
future ;)

Chuck
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