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Re: Paul Sephton's article "A Question Of Rounding" in the Linux Gazette
Vincent Lefevre schrieb:
On 2007-10-03 17:22:19 +0200, Thorsten Siebenborn wrote:
"Most" is a bit harsh. One error is that the value 45.658 of
45.657784532 is accurate to five digits, not three (He obviously meant
three fractional digits). Then he didn't knew that 2.49999999999992
isn't binary, but must be already approximated. I have seen far worse
articles.
The confusion is more than that. He also wants 5000.525 (which is
smaller than 5000.525 when converted to binary) to be rounded to
5000.53 with "%.2f".
I have read in the meantime most of your discussion.
Poor guy, he seems to have used FP for years and couldn't cope
with the realization that FP is not a good idea for business
applications, especially if rounding is involved.
What is so wrong with the article that it should be killed ?
This article will lead many users to confusion.
Many ? I doubt it.
The people who don't understand what Sephton is actually saying
will ignore him. The people who *do* understand Sephton know that
his request will be obsolete (IEEE 754R ties-away-rounding)
or impossible (correct rounding of decimal rounding for binary numbers).
And, really, is Linux Gazette the kind of online paper which needs
stringent scientific numerical expertship ?
Trying to remove it will probably cause much more arousal (censorship !
suppression !) than simply leaving it.
Best,
Thorsten