[SciPy-user] help with precision for big numbers

[Johann Cohen-Tanugi]

thanks Damian,
dammit, yes of course I got bitten again by the int/int=int feature of 
python 2.x. Supposed to vanish in python 3, right..... looking forward 
to it!
Johann

Damian Eads wrote:
> Hi Johann,
>
> First off, the first part of the expression s=... yields two different 
> answers, depending whether you cast Toff to a float or not.
>
> In [1]: 1.+Toff/Ton
> Out[1]: 17.0
>
> In [2]: 1.+float(Toff)/Ton
> Out[2]: 17.666666666666668
>
> Which is the desired behavior for your problem?
>
> The limit of precision of floating point numbers in native Python is 
> 32-bit. Numpy defines extra scalar types and you will find most of the 
> ones supported by your machine in the numpy package. np.float64 will 
> give you 64-bit precision. There is a np.float96 for 96-bit floats but 
> I've never used it before.
>
> Damian
>
> Johann Cohen-Tanugi wrote:
>   
>> Hello,
>> I am computing :
>>
>> In [22]: for i in range(6):
>>     s=(1.+Toff/Ton)**i*sp.factorial(Non+Noff-i)/sp.factorial(Non-i)
>>     print "%.14g"%s
>>    ....:    
>>    ....:    
>> 4.3585218122217e+42
>> 9.7493251062853e+42
>> 1.7917678573714e+43
>> 2.5383377979428e+43
>> 2.4658138608587e+43
>> 1.2329069304293e+43
>>
>> A colleague using GSL and C code with double precision and long double ( 
>> I am not sure whether he has a 64bit machine) obtained the following 
>> values :
>> 4.3585218122216e+42
>> 1.0131651581042e+43
>> 1.9350541758386e+43
>> 2.8488297588735e+43
>> 2.8759614708627e+43
>> 1.4943721368208e+43
>>
>> Close but not identical...... I was wondering if there is a way to 
>> increase numerical accuracy within scipy, assuming the standard behavior 
>> is not optimal with this respect. Or any other thoughts about these 
>> discrepancies? Or some nifty tricks to recover lost precision by 
>> organizing the computation differently?
>>
>> thanks in advance,
>> Johann
>> _______________________________________________
>> SciPy-user mailing list
>> SciPy-user at scipy.org
>> http://projects.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-user
>>     
>
> _______________________________________________
> SciPy-user mailing list
> SciPy-user at scipy.org
> http://projects.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-user
>