Pol wrote:
> Why do steps at 1.8 and 1.9 are displayed with 16 digits, unlike the other
> steps?
Because 0.1 cannot be represented exactly as a floating-point number,
and repeatedly adding 0.1 will introduce (more) roundoff errors. This
is also why maxima prints out i = - 1.3877787807814457E-16 instead of 0.
Extra digits are needed because they are needed to represent the number.
Maxima has rational numbers. Why not use them? Or count from -1 to 20
and divide i by 10.0. The results will be more accurate, but will
still have roundoff issues.
Ray