What Is Pi, and Why Is It So Important?

[dm319]

(02-21-2024 10:06 PM)Matt Agajanian Wrote:  This begs my question. If so much precision is needed in certain sciences, why use a physical calculator with its limited precision in the first place?

Having recently been trying to double-check answers on the DM42, I can say it isn't that trivial to exceed the binary-coded decimal representations of calculators. I used an arbitrary precision library to do it, but if you just calculate using the default double precision binary then you get weirdness even with 0.3-0.2. I'm not sure how many digits of BCD is better than double precision binary FP though.