[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
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