The REAL definition of "REAL" (was: Trivia Question

From: Kevin Handy <kth_at_srv.net>
Date: Mon Feb 24 13:03:00 2003

Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:

>On Mon, 24 Feb 2003, Feldman, Robert wrote:
>
>
>>A real computer doesn't know what the square root of negative one is? :-P
>>
>>
>
>Thank you.
>Last week, I was explaining to one of my classes the differences between
>Floating Point and Real.
>
>A REAL computer (if there were such - analog??) would have infinite
>numbers between 1 and 2. A Floating Point system only has about 8
>million, and doesn't have any odd numbers above about 16 million.
>
Does odd/even have much meaning with floating point numbers,
real or otherwise?

Being even means it can be divided by two without any remainder,
but with any king of floating point, remainder doesn't have much
meaning. ie. is 3.4 or 3.5 odd or even? What are the reaminders?
Is PI odd or even?

The only way to decide is to convert them to integers, and then
decide, but then you are working with a different set of numbers.

>Double precision has substantially more, but still quite clearly
>finite.
Received on Mon Feb 24 2003 - 13:03:00 GMT