weird math errors in python 2.1.1

Chris Barker chrishbarker at home.net
Wed Aug 29 18:58:00 EDT 2001


Jeff Shannon wrote:
> There are some decimal numbers that are not precisely
> representable in binary floating point

true

>(just as there are some binary fp numbers that aren't decimal-representable).

Actually, I don't think that is true, as I learned on this list. I think
anything representable in binary is representable in the same number of
digits or less in decimal. That is the same number of decimal digits and
binary digits, so that's a LOT of digits! (55 for a Python float, I
believe)



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Christopher Barker,
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