SR-50: A bumpy road??

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(06-13-2024 03:33 AM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  William Kahan had the following to say about the apparent "increased accuracy" of TI models when he worked as a consultant for HP.

This text has been quoted on this forum many times already. I still don't think that it is worthy of someone like Dr. Kahan. It is trivial knowledge that digital machines with limited resources are limited to a certain number of decimal places. In this case, Ti got it right by computing more decimal places than can be displayed, so for simple calciulations and for complicated calculations repeated several times, all displayed digits are correct. HP got it wrong because the number of digits in the display is the same as the internal precision. There is nothing to see here and nothing to discuss and of course any computer will display wrong digits if you only repeat a calculation often enough. One time for HP and seven times for Ti in this case.

Regards
Max