14 Trial runs: Unums face challenge calculations
Berkeley Professor William Kahan, primary architect of the IEEE 754 Standard.
14.1 Floating point II: The wrath of Kahan
Berkeley professor William Kahan is skilled at finding examples of mathematical questions to which floating point provides grossly incorrect answers … as well as examples where proposed alternatives are even worse than floats. Can unums withstand the wrath of Kahan?
Here is one of Kahan’s favorite examples: Iterate
starting with u0 = 2, u1 = -4. With floats, the iteration starts to converge to 6, but then heads for 100 instead even though 6 is ...
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