[Python-ideas] Python Numbers as Human Concept Decimal System

[Mark H. Harris]

On Saturday, March 8, 2014 3:35:14 PM UTC-6, Andrew Barnert wrote:

It looks like you're trying to emulate a pocket calculator here. The 
> question is, why are you accepting floats in the first place if that's your 
> goal?
>

That's fair... if it were me, or you, I wouldn't.   In fact, if it were 
just me, or just you,
I don't think any of us would be talking about this--- I wouldn't even have 
brought it up.

I am advocating for people--- I am going to say, " if you want just a tad 
more than double
just to check things out, please use the decimal module and import pdeclib. 
 These folks
are what Guido called newbies, I'll call them naive users, and these folks 
are using 
a calculator (like the TI89) and they will be prone to keying in 
 sqrt(2.345) /  

Its just easier than explaining to them (at this point) all the stuff they 
need to understand to use
the functions by making sure they feed decimals to the function; either by 
quoting their
numeric inputs, or even using a decimal literal, &c. They know what the 
functions do,
and will want to use them to get more digits, but may not remember the 
rules to get the
"correct" digits.  So I'm advocating for them, to make it easier.  

If it were just me,  I'd just make sure the functions got decimals and be 
done with it. 

If you look at my square root function, its really not right; but its 
closer.  For instance if you give it 
1/3 it still is only slightly better than before. I don't have all the junk 
after the 16 th 
digit, but, I only have .33333333 to 15 places.  So, believe me, I know 
there is no
one truly good answer here. Just trying to make it easier for the most 
people.

marcus 
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