Re: Motion P1788/M0036.03: Flavors: NO
On 2012-09-09 03:05:34 -0600, Alan Eliasen wrote:
> I would tend to vote YES for a motion that has been thought through
> more clearly than this one. The rationale paper is muddled, does not
> define terms that it uses, is inconsistent in its terminology (for
> example, it defines "C-opinst" but then in some places uses the term
> "common opinst" which is not clear if it refers to the same term; there
> are many such instances of inconsistent editing,) is not consistent with
> the text of the Motion, has open-ended questions, notes to self that
> indicate that further research is necessary, inconsistent line wrapping
> and notation, and other more fundamental problems.
Note that purely editorial errors (line wrapping, obvious typos...)
are not a problem since motions are not standard text, but are
interpreted by the editors.
> As I have noted before, I am concerned that this standardization
> effort is not paying enough consideration to "better" interval
> implementations, including those that may include rational numbers,
> arbitrary-precision numbers, symbolic constants (such as pi or e,) and
> so on. The open-ended questions in the rationale paper do not give me
> confidence that these issues have been properly considered. Is
> arbitrary-precision or symbolic mathematics considered an incompatible
> flavor? Or is it within the aegis of the "common operations?" (These
> are apparently unresolved questions-to-self in the current rationale paper.)
Symbolic constants are real numbers. So, this is unrelated to flavors.
They can even be supported by inf-sup if F includes such constants
(since F is *not* necessarily a floating-point format, but can
include any finite subset of real numbers, this is OK). Supporting
"all" symbolic constants can be done like multiple-precision.
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@xxxxxxxxxx> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.net/>
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Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)