[R] Floating-point arithmetic

[(Ted Harding)]

Hi Folks,

A recent exchange on the 'octave' list led to the following
paper being cited, which I had not met before:

  What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About
  Floating-Point Arithmetic, by David Goldberg,

originally published in the March, 1991 issue of Computing Surveys.

PDF and HTML versions are widely available on the web (see Google),
e.g. at

http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~dws/grouplinks/floating_point_math.pdf

Though over the years I've many times been there, done that,
got bitten by the bugs, and bought the T-shirt [I have one from
Florida depicting a large and joyful mosquito with proboscis
dripping with blood] I still found this a revealing read, written
in a style well-suited to general users of numerical computer
languages.

So I'm writing to bring it to the notice of R users who may not
have come across it.

(And also, maybe, to pre-empt that question that some of you may
have been thinking of asking ... ).

Best wishes to all,
Ted.


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Date: 13-Sep-05                                       Time: 08:30:03
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