roundoff errors



Ray, 

what I wanted to say is, that fpprec=30 results in displaying exactly 30 digits 
of PI (or another number; if the last digits are not zeroes) 
and that the last digit is rounded correctly. 
The correctness of the number itself is another point. 

Greetings
Volker


Raymond Toy schrieb:
> Volker van Nek wrote:
>   
>> Remembering the PI computations I did some time ago I found that time that 
>> fpprec is very precise. E.g. the following shows that a correct rounding was 
>> made at the 30. valid digit.
>>
>> (%i4) fpprec:30$
>> (%i5) bfloat(%pi);
>> (%o5)                  3.14159265358979323846264338328b0
>> (%i6) slength(string(%));
>> (%o6)                                 33
>> (%i7) fpprec:32$
>> (%i8) bfloat(%pi);
>> (%o8)                 3.1415926535897932384626433832795b0
>>     
> Isn't this because bfloat(%pi) calls fppi1 which calls comppi with 12
> extra bits of precision and then rounds the result to the desired precision?
>
> Ray
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