[Python-ideas] Floating point "closeness" Proposal Outline

[Chris Barker]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 10:50 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:

> If the function only handles 'relatively close', I would be happier with
> 'relative_close' or 'rel_close' than 'is close' since the latter tends to
> imply to me absolute closeness.
>

yeah, though I think Ron has persuaded me that we can (and proaly need to,
for the near-zero case) have it do both relative and absolute....

The proposed doc (and docstring) should mention absolute tolerance and
> 'abs(a-b) < tol' as an alternative, expecially near or at 0.


absolutely -- I think the near-zero case is where we need to put absolute
in there, and once it's there, why not use it for other use-cases?

 -Chris


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Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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