POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : Precision of large objects : Re: Precision of large objects Server Time
30 Jul 2024 12:25:14 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Precision of large objects  
From: Warp
Date: 1 Sep 2009 13:53:52
Message: <4a9d5faf@news.povray.org>
clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Although this is the case, multiplications do not affect the precision 
> of floating-point computations too much.

  Of course it doesn't affect the precision of floating point computations.
Double-precision floating point numbers will always have 53 bits of
precision. that doesn't change.

  However, when multiplying two 15-digit numbers, the result will have
30 significant digits of information, and from those the 15 least significant
will be lost. Thus the result will not be exact.

  As a concrete example:

0.123456789012345 * 0.123456789012345 =
0.01524157875323866912056239902

  When stored into a 'double', the result will be rounded to something like

0.0152415787532387

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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