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Talk:Balanced ternary: Difference between revisions
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: A floating point involves too many things. Seemingly simple stuff like "0.1" has no exact finite representation in either base 2 (IEEE) or base 3, thus the meaning of "436.436" in a task requirement is dubious to begin with: Rdm ''will'' come along and bury me with questions, so I'd rather not do that.
: We could dodge this issue by limiting digit length after decimal point, which is essentially treating them as rationals, then we'd have different problems: either we don't cancel out common factors in numerator and denominator, which is obviously unsatisfactory; or we do cancel them out, which requires division and modulo, which would be difficult and long-winded. I don't want to make the task require more effort than necessary. In any event, if the task proves to be so popular that people flock to it like hot cakes (I doubt it), one could always make another task to extend it to floating point numbers. --[[User:Ledrug|Ledrug]] 16:42, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
Ironically this algorithm is (basically) the same as the binary equivalent (and which also is yet to be added into RosettaCode). Hence (for 2, 4, 8 & 16 bytes precision) it is generally just ''built-in'' everybody's computer.
'''Moreover''' the basic addition and multiplication algorithm is taught to every grade school student on the planet... It is awesome to realise what complex algorithms the mind of an [http://education.more4kids.info/46/homeschooling-math-concepts-and-skills-by-age/ 8-11] year old can be taught to process with a the aid of a good teacher.
However - back to the point - I am not opposed to splitting it into 2 tasks, eg ''whole'' and ''floating point'' balance ternary. Certainly ''whole balance ternary'' is a whole lot easier on the old belfry, and ''floating point'' would then be a corollary task. And it would be sad not to see the more general ''floating point'' solution.
I see a parallel with why hardware floating point took so long in arriving into a our typical PC.
[[User:NevilleDNZ|NevilleDNZ]] 20:45, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
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