Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!swrinde!pipex!logica.co.uk!mac-243.camb.logica.co.uk!user
From: susan@logcam.co.uk (Susan Stepney)
Subject: Re: Substraction Problems :-(
Message-ID: <susan-060395132900@mac-243.camb.logica.co.uk>
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Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 13:39:49 GMT
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(Sorry for not including an attribution;
it had been lost from the post I'm 'really' replying to...)

> >
> >We are building a critical application
> >and need to substract correctly.

Rather than join the "Smalltalk v. other languages" debate on the handling
of double precision, I'd like to pick up on the word "critical" in the
original post.  I was taught by an old hand at numerical analysis:

  "double precision is a crutch used by people who
   don't do their numerical analysis properly"

If your application is *critical*, make sure your numerical algorithms
are so *robust* that it doesn't *matter* that you've got 6 figure accuracy.

_________________________________________________________________________
Susan Stepney                                          susan@logcam.co.uk
Logica UK Ltd, Cambridge Division, Betjeman House,
104 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 1LQ, UK                 tel +44 1223 66343
