Talk:Kahan summation: Difference between revisions
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:Would you need different numbers for different precision numbers? What numbers to choose as I would prefer some standardisation.
:Or should it be written so that the example is forced to show the effect with the constants they use? --[[User:Paddy3118|Paddy3118]] ([[User talk:Paddy3118|talk]]) 10:49, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
:: I also agree Kahan summation is a good task but have some issues. It seems Kahan summation is meaningful for fixed-precision floating-point numbers. That is, floating point numbers where the number of significant digits (or bits) is limited. This needs to be clear in the task description. If a language has no convenient fixed-precision floating-point representation, people should feel free to omit it.
::I think the fixed-precision floating-point type most languages will support is IEEE 754 64-bit float. I suggest we provide task data crafted for this type. The Python example data works for floating point math that can be limited to 6 significant decimal places. It would be fine to retain this as alternative data for languages that can conveniently limit the significant decimal digits as Python can. If other languages come along that can do neither IEEE 754 64-bit floats nor 6-significant decimal digit floats but have some other limited precision floating point representation, we should allow them appropriate test data. —[[User:Sonia|Sonia]] ([[User talk:Sonia|talk]]) 20:29, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
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