"Andrey G. Grozin" <A.G.Grozin at inp.nsk.su> writes:
...
>> If Maxima adheres to standards which allow 3*1.4^2 to not quite be
>> 5.88, in other words if Maxima can't quite correctly do fifth grade
>> arithmetic, is that good enough?
> I *strongly* disagree.
To what? To a question?
> If you use a floating-point number 1.4, it cannot be represented by a
> finite-length binary,
No, but it can be represented by a finite-length decimal, which is how
it is entered, as a matter of fact.
> and operations on it will produce approximate results due to
> rounding errors.
Which make things more efficient, but aren't necessary.
> I think it would be *extremely* stupid (though possible, of course) to use
> decimal arithmetics in a CAS. Why base 10?
Is that a serious question? You must be joking.
> Why not 12? Or 16? Or anything else?
It's possible, if perhaps inefficient, to have a program deal with any
base.
> 10 does not stand out in any way (2 does).
Base 10 most certainly does stand out.
While other bases have their uses, I would guess most people enter
data in base 10.
It may well be the case that getting small errors when doing decimal
arithmetic is an acceptable cost, but it was previously implied that
it is a silly thing to talk about. I disagree. What's more, I think
that if getting small errors when computing 1.4^2 is the cost of using
Maxima, the manual should clearly state that.
Jay