Re: A flaw with Venkat Reddy's arithmetic.

Marshall wrote:

Frankly I'm really pissed off at the real numbers and how hard
they are to do calculations with.

As to what they mean, the answer a lot of people run with
is that they mean an interval or a range of numbers. But I
find that the model of them as being precise values with
imprecise operators (approximations) is a better description.

For the interested:

http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/sw2004/egner.pdf

In another poster you wrote, when I asked you for ever having solved a
_real_ problem:

Well, I have code in systems that handle billions of dollars
in transactions a year. So, yeah.

Most experience I have with floating point numbers is in the context of
_technical_ applications. With administrative applications (: finance),
I'm relying on integer numbers, no floats. So I don't understand quite
well your frustrations about floating point numbers with dollars.

Han de Bruijn

.