[R] bug?

[Barry Rowlingson]

> 
> It is correct, just an instability of the representation of that 
> floating point number, because (regularly) floating point numbers cannot 
> be represented exactly.


  A python developer friend of mine tells me there was a proposal for 
python that two floating-point numbers should _never_ return TRUE for 
'=='. Even if their binary representations are the same. I can see the 
merit in this, as long as its documented.

  I'm tempted to think that any argument for  float == float always 
returning false is almost like saying float == float is an invalid 
operation, and hence should be flagged as that at compile/interp time. 
Probably easier to do in a strongly-typed language.

  Of course the main problem is that us 'old-timers' who grew up 
deciding whether to use REAL*4 or REAL*8 understand what is going on 
'under the hood' with floating point numbers, but today's computers are 
being used by mathematicians and statisticians whose perception of 
numbers comes from a different direction to computer people. "0.7 + 0.1 
does not equal 0.8? Does 1+1 not equal 2? That's madness!", they cry.

  The solution is education: I'm hoping to teach all our postgraduates a 
short course on computer history and culture, from binary numbers up to 
software engineering, hardware, programming languages etc etc. Floating 
point formats are in there somewhere, for sure.

Baz