Re: st: rounding the minimum of a negative number

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

You say that

> if Stata had
> displayed something like
>
> -1.980000009999
>
> for 1.9810, I would not have been puzzled.

I would have been puzzled to see that. Minus sign aside,
1.980000009999 does not round to 1.9810 under any rule.

We can match ignorance. I have never used Python, but it does not make
any sense to talk about the "true" decimal value of 0.1 or even of the
binary representation that any language uses for 0.1.

The short answer to your last question is, I believe, no.

Otherwise do read William Gould's blog entry.

Nick

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 2:19 PM, annoporci <annoporci@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Nick for these precisions.
>
>
>> If you want _display_ to a fixed number of decimal places, that is
>> ultimately a question of formatting and not a problem of numerics.
>
>
> Yes. I guess another way of expressing my puzzlement is that Stata does
> not display, by default, to a greater number of decimal places.
>
> I don't know anything about this, but in Python, for instance, according
> to the documentation: "On a typical machine running Python, there are 53
> bits of precision available for a Python float." And, to quote more:
>
> If Python were to print the true decimal value of the binary approximation
> stored for 0.1, it would have to display:
>
> 0.1000000000000000055511151231257827021181583404541015625
>
> So that's still quite a few zeros after the first 1. And if Stata had
> displayed something like
>
> -1.980000009999
>
> for 1.9810, I would not have been puzzled.
>
> I do have one last question and then I'll consider the matter closed:
>
> Would I get a more accurate approximation of "-1.981" with Stata if I
> input "-1.981000000001" than if I input "-1.981" ? in the sense that it
> would "force" Stata to store the zeros after 981? (or am I
> misunderstanding the whole issue?)
>
> Thanks Nick,
>
> --
> Patrick Toche.
>
> References:
> http://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/floatingpoint.html
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:15:45 +0800, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I don't think that is a clear specification of what Stata is doing (it
>> doesn't "make up its own digits") or of what it should, in your view,
>> do instead.
>>
>> If you want _display_ to a fixed number of decimal places, that is
>> ultimately a question of formatting and not a problem of numerics.
>> That is,
>>
>> display %3.2 f  1 + 98/100
>>
>> will ensure that you see "1.98" and this last step is in essence
>> string manipulation with numeric characters. But all that is done by
>> (e.g.)
>>
>> scalar foo = 1.98
>>
>> is putting a binary approximation of 1.98 in a scalar. Adding bits
>> will change the accuracy of the approximation (only).
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