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> > I always wondered why the calculations are single-precision.
> > That always seemed stupid to me.
> >Speed.
>
> No, not speed. Floating point math these days is almost always
> handled by a math coprocessor (nearly all computers have had them
> since the early 1990s) and math coprocessors are designed to run
> optimally for double-precision math.
But remember that Easy Language has its roots in the early 90's.
(Or was it late 80's? I don't remember.) Math coprocs weren't
as universal then, especially for some of the "legacy" PC's then
in use. Memory was also more valuable, and the EL designers may
have decided to trade off numerical precision for speed and space
savings. It seems pretty clear nobody at TRAD understands
numerical precision anyway.
I understand double-precision is an option in TS7. That's a big
improvement. Now if they just had somebody competent rewrite
their math libraries...
> >plus most programmers are mathematically incompetent.
>
> Well, there's that... I see a number of functions in EL that look
> like they were written by following a classical math textbook rather
> than a book on efficient computer algorithms.
It's not efficient, or even correct. The code you see in many TS
library functions would get you flunked out of any numerical-
methods class. It produces patently incorrect results because it
ignores the critical issues of numerical precision in computer
math. And obviously nobody at TRAD ever bothered to check their
results against a reliable reference, like Excel.
Gary
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