Amazing Little Ecosystem (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterthunder) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
intro_to_cs2010-01-29 09:37 pm
winterthunder) wrote in intro_to_cs2010-01-29 09:37 pm
Entry tags:
Readings
No problem set this week! \0/
Instead, we get two readings to mull over: Floating Point Arithmetic and Newton's Method. Now, the first one I was all right with. I can't envision a situation in which I could possibly care that Python rounds to only seventeen significant digits, but hey, I guess it's good to know these things. But what does Newton's method have to do with programming?
On a side note (and out of curiosity on my part), we started out with 30 something people following along. How many are still with us as we go into the fifth lecture? Stand up and be counted!
Instead, we get two readings to mull over: Floating Point Arithmetic and Newton's Method. Now, the first one I was all right with. I can't envision a situation in which I could possibly care that Python rounds to only seventeen significant digits, but hey, I guess it's good to know these things. But what does Newton's method have to do with programming?
On a side note (and out of curiosity on my part), we started out with 30 something people following along. How many are still with us as we go into the fifth lecture? Stand up and be counted!
no subject
Knowing about the pitfalls of floating point is important when you're doing financial code; if it rounds in a way you don't expect, you're a cent out, and over eighty thousand transactions...yeah. It probably matters for scientific number-crunching too, but it's a long time since I've had to do with any.
no subject