This math scares me

[John W. Baxter]

In article <984518199.127140 at newsmaster-04.atnet.at>,
 "Werner Schiendl" <ws-news at gmx.at> wrote:

> True, but even 0.1 and 0.2 need not necessarily be exact values.

Of the single decimal digit numbers, 20% are exact (x.0 and x.5, for not 
huge x).  For two decimal places, it's down to 4% (x.00, x.25, x.50, 
x.75) and it spirals quickly downward from there.

Bill Gates got this right in the early days, delivering two Basic 
interpreters:  binary floating point for speed, and decimal floating 
point for money and such.  (I never looked at how well his interpreters 
did...I just used them.)

  --John

-- 
John W. Baxter   Port Ludlow, WA USA  jwbnews at scandaroon.com