-----"Richard Hennessy" <rich.hennessy at verizon.net> wrote: -----
>So?is?nfloat(I(42),[],20)?=?8.7541921419809776312b-3?the?right?answer???It
>is?certainly?faster?than?setting?fpprec:1000?
>and?calling?bfloat(I(42)).??That?is?the?brute?force?way?which?I?really
>don't?like.
Yes, I think that nfloat(I(42),[],20) = 8.7541921419809776312b-3 is accurate
to all displayed decimal places. Certainly, the goal of nfloat is to accurately
evaluate some subset of Maxima expressions even when the expressions are numerically
ill-conditioned. The algorithm nfloat uses has some compromises, so you can't, for
example, prove a theorem using the output of nfloat.
--bw