this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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Science Memes

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IEEE 754 (cdn.fosstodon.org)
submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
37 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/24332731

~~Stolen~~ Cross-posted from here: https://fosstodon.org/@foo/113731569632505985

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

It’s useful to know that floats don’t have unlimited precision, and why adding a very large number with a very small number isn’t going to work well.

[–] cyborganism 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah but you don't really have to think about how it works in the background ever time you deal with that. You just know.

You learn how once and then you just remember not to do that and that's it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

I agree we don’t generally need think about the technical details. It’s just good to be aware of the exponent and mantissa parts to better understand where the inaccuracies of floating point numbers come from.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

And this is why f64 exists!