Rounding
On Jan 5, 2013, at 20:30 , Rolf Turner wrote:
On 01/06/2013 07:42 AM, David Arnold wrote:
Hi, Can someone explain this:
options(digits=20) 1/3
[1] 0.33333333333333331483 Why the 1483 at the end?
There are 10 sorts of people; those who understand binary arithmetic and those who don't. See also FAQ 7.31.
Actually, it seems there are 11 sorts; those who understand binary, those who understand floating point binary, and those who do neither. The first 0.010101010101010101... of these would seem to the the issue here. (Or 1.0101010101...e-10 if you want to split hairs.)
Peter Dalgaard, Professor, Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark Phone: (+45)38153501 Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com