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Richard
Thank you for the technical explanation. I was generally aware of the
limitations of "single digit precision", but not well enough schooled to
discuss it intelligently with Gordon or answer technical questions.
I too hope that Equis will do something about it eventually, but without
forsaking backward compatibility. I won't hold my breath though.
Roy
> For those interested why this happens, it's due to the way Metastock
> internally does its calculations using Single Precision Floating Point
> numbers.
>
> Computers are binary animals and therefore to represent numbers and
> fractions of numbers, a method called floating point representation is
used.
> The more "bits" (0s and 1s) used in representing a number, the more
> "precision" it will have and the two most common forms are single and
double
> precision. There is a computational performance penalty when using double
> precision numbers.
>
> A single precision number occupies 32 bits (4 bytes) of memory whereas a
> double precision is 64 bits (8 bytes) of information.
>
> Unfortunately, with certain types of calculations and indicators, the
errors
> introduced by single precision calculations can be significantly
multiplied
> and cause a wide margin of error. This is especially true of numbers that
> are either very large or numbers with lots of decimal places. It's even
> worse when you try to multiply large numbers by small numbers etc and for
> cumulative values that reference all previous values in its calculation
(eg.
> OBV).
>
> Let's hope that Equis will someday implement double precision in both
their
> formula calculations and their data format (or at least give the user the
> option).
>
> Best regards,
> Richard Dale
> Norgate Investor Services
> - Premium Quality Stock & Futures Data covering Australia, Singapore and
US
> Markets -
> www.premiumdata.net
>
>
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