On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 09:59, Robert Dodier <robert.dodier at gmail.com>wrote:
> ...There is a different interpretation of the float function, which
> I think I would prefer, namely float(foo(x)) should return the
> floating point number closest to the numerical value of foo(x).
> ...
> The latter is obviously more work
>
That's an understatement! I suppose if we had arbitrary-precision interval
arithmetic (which we don't) we could calculate foo(x) at ever increasing
precisions until the interval was small enough (either 1e-16 relative error
or 2e-323 absolute error near zero). But how often are such heroic measures
really useful to the user?
-s