Re: Zero or not?

[Ben Abbott]

check out the function "eps"

On Jul 21, 2007, at 12:45 PM, Matthias Brennwald wrote:

> Ok. Is there a way to predict the expected offset? I need to test if
> the sums across the columns of a matrix are zero, or at least within
> the bounds expected from the IEEE arithmetic.
>
> Matthias
>
> On 21.07.2007, at 15:17, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
>
> > On 21/07/07, Matthias Brennwald <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > I expected the below code to yield only zeros, but it does not:
> >
> > That's just the way IEEE arithmetic works. When subtracting two
> > numbers that are very close, you may not get zero, just machine
> > epsilon. Try this, for fun: 0.3 - 0.2 - 0.1
> >
> > - Jordi G. H.