[clean-list] Re: Re: 1.Floating Point Support (clean-list digest)

Siegfried Gonzi siegfried.gonzi@kfunigraz.ac.at
Mon, 20 Nov 2000 12:52:56 +0100


clean-list-admin@cs.kun.nl wrote:

> I don't understand what "iterate the 'e' function" means.
> "e" is a constant, approximately 2.71828.  I am guessing this
> means something like
>     x[0] := whatever
>     x[i+1] := exp(x[i])...
> but what is the point of that?  Or does it mean
> "compute e using the formula e = sum from k to infinity of 1/k!"?
>

They had for their school-leaving exam to calculate something like this (so far I
could remember):

per def.:     lim(n->infinity) (1 + 1/n)^n == e

with the old 68040 Motorola they were able to use n>1.0e15, but with the 64bit and
n>1.0e15 the above formula delivers 1.

To not ask me what the teacher's intention was... Some people from the newsgroup
persuaded him to say to the students that this is a real life  problem: "... not
able to calculate with any accuration in the real life...".


Regards,
S. Gonzi

>
>