Re^3: Is this odd behavior a floating point problem?

in reply to Re^2: Is this odd behavior a floating point problem?
in thread Is this odd behavior a floating point problem?

Yes, I've seen and skimmed this document, but, not to be rude, but I'm not interested in becoming a computer scientist in order to write a script to do basic math. Adding together 0.001 40 times is pretty basic and if my calculator can do it, I not sure I understand why Perl won't.

:) Try site:perlmonks.org What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic and you can learn from others who weren't satisfied with that document

Now you say you're studying chemical diffusion so I assume you would have heard of significant figures? Surely your professor, when discussing significant figures, would have explained the basic limitations of adding machines (calculators/computers)?

I was hoping, after reading that document, you would ask explicitly how to round numbers for display purposes in perl.

While you can create a calculator using perl (like Tk::Calculator::RPN::HP ), and expect it to do rounding like your pocket calculator, perl itself, not being a calculator, won't hide the details of floating point arithmetic from you, so it is good knowledge to have.

Any scientist using computers for calculations needs to know the limits of his tools.

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom