question about precision of arithmetic involving empirical, measured quantities Re: Unum 4.0 beta

[John Benson]

Will this package handle approximate quantities, too?

Here's some background for the question:

Let's say you have measured the side of a square area to be 10 meters, +/- 1
meter. We want to compute the area of the square.

We are squaring a range of 9 to 11 meters, and get a resulting area range of
81 to 121 square meters. If we take the midpoint of this range as the most
representative value, we end up with (81 + 121)/2 or 101 square meters,
plus-or-minus 20 square meters! I seem to recall some rule that in a
multiplication, the total uncertainty is the sum of the quotients
(multiplicand/uncertainty of multiplicand) over all multiplicands. By this
rule, the total uncertainty then would compute as (10/1) * (10/1) or twenty
square meters, as we reckoned by explicit range calculation. But what about
the discrepancy between 100 and 101?

Whenever arithmetic is done involving things like volts and m/sec (as
opposed to apples, bananas and people), you necessarily end up with problems
like this. However, I got through a few years of college physics and
chemistry without anyone ever worrying about the real uncertainties, beyond
the simple "significant figures" approach for multiplication and the
comparative precision approach for addition.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Pierre Denis" <Pierre-et-Liliane.DENIS at village.uunet.be>
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 12:18 PM
Subject: ANN: Unum 4.0 beta


> Unum 4.0 beta is now available on
http://home.tiscali.be/be052320/Unum.html.
>
> This Python module allows you to work with units like volts, hours,
meter-per-second or dollars-per-spam. So you can play with true
> quantities (called 'unums') instead of simple numbers. Consistency between
units is checked at each expression evaluation and an
> exception is raised when something is wrong, for instance, when trying to
add apples to bananas. Unit conversion and unit output
> formatting are performed automatically when needed. The main goals are to
avoid unit errors in your calculations and to make unit
> output formatting easy and uniform.
>
> This new version encompasses all the SI units and allows you to define
your own libraries of units, with specific names and symbols.
> Other improvements makes this version more solid : compatibility with
NumPy, packages, misc optimizations, true exceptions,
> new-style class, static methods, etc. The installation also should be
easier and more standard through installation files. The site
> and tutorial page have been updated to give more accurate information.
>
> This 4.0-beta version is stable, fairly. The term 'beta' essentially means
that problems may potentially occur at installation on
> specific OS. I made successful installation tests on Windows 98, XP and
Red Hat Linux 7.2. Besides this, the choices I made for unit
> names and symbols are subject to change if I receive more sensible
suggestions. Of course, any other ideas, comments or criticisms
> are welcome before releasing the official Unum 4.0 (no planning yet).
>
> This version requires Python 2.2 (at least).
>
> The license is GPL.
>
> Thanks for your interest,
>
> Pierre Denis
>
>
>
>
>
>