Talk:Double precision

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[edit] Pros/Cons of Double Precision

This entry seems to be very technical explaining what Double Precision is, but not the benefits or applications of it.

I miss this too :/ Too bad I can't answer the question. -- Henriok 11:36, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Um... pros: more digits of precision... cons: slower mathematical operations, takes more memory... ? Not too hard... Sdedeo (tips) 03:12, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that was what they were asking. Given a fixed number of bits of precision "n", you could divide the interval over which you want to calculate in 2^n equal steps, this is integer arithmetic. Unfortunately it breaks down if the interval is not bounded or if both extremely large and extremely small values are expected and relative error is more important than absolute error. This means integers are unsuitable for a general purpose arithmetic (they are "bounded") and for many real world problems (where the relative error is most important). Now, you could save the logarithm of your values to solve this, but unfortunately adding and substracting numbers would become problematic. So double precision is essentially a hybrid approach. Shinobu (talk) 23:45, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I think Gerbrant is reffering to the properties of floating point, not double precision in itself. (One can have double-precision integers). mfc (talk) 09:06, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fractions

I can see the exponent and the sign, but which digits in the significand are used for the numbers before the decimal point, and which are used for after? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.91.121.114 (talk) 20:24, 20 May 2008 (UTC)