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This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic. You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.

What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic
by Lost at 2:08 am EDT, Aug 14, 2006

Floating-point arithmetic is considered an esoteric subject by many people. This is rather surprising because floating-point is ubiquitous in computer systems. Almost every language has a floating-point datatype; computers from PCs to supercomputers have floating-point accelerators; most compilers will be called upon to compile floating-point algorithms from time to time; and virtually every operating system must respond to floating-point exceptions such as overflow. This paper presents a tutorial on those aspects of floating-point that have a direct impact on designers of computer systems. It begins with background on floating-point representation and rounding error, continues with a discussion of the IEEE floating-point standard, and concludes with numerous examples of how computer builders can better support floating-point.

People do not care for rounding errors in their financial reporting software.


 
 
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