(C) A. Ashkenazi
Music: ORANGE BUGY RMX (C) Mr.Z / LS (R) DGN
How much will it?
I - the programmer.
Comes as a client to me, he wrote, said, programs, would
like to count. Take. The program is small. What, I ask, it
should give? Yes, a little, said one number. Look in aaplet -
Stone Age. The era of stone axes. Learn, ask yourself? Looked
down the client and says - from books.
I planted this nonsense the next day in the car, she
blinked for a moment and type:
0.40000023E01.
In the Russian translation - is 4.0000023. Strange, but a
number. Do not mistake the account ran up? All the same
machine, look, sixty-nine-tail seconds labored, and she, by the
way, we do not the accounts of the stone throwing. Seventy
seconds of CPU time - it's almost a hundred million operations.
Found in double precision. Issued:
0.40000022E01.
Well, well, a reasonable refinement. Hence, no
error calculation.
It seemed funny to me, I began to understand the program.
It is understandable because that is unknown a task the answer
can be arbitrary. But if he is from whole number to two
millions of different, there is a natural suspicion that the
answer is and should be be an integer. A difference - some kind
of error.
The program of course, I figured out special tricks in it
are not found. Double rows of companion summed up, and then
there just was not - and hyperbolic functions, and Bessel. I
suspect all of this thought. Call a friend mathematics. He
looked at the books and says - no rows in your books, wait an
hour or so, I had them myself poobdumayu. Through two o'clock
to call - your ranks, says you can take. But I persuaded him to
come. He looked print and immediately became serious. Until the
morning we had sat. All true, but twenty-two ten millionth do
arise. At six o'clock he had finished his coffee, stood up and
said - go home, I was about ten at the institute is necessary.
This calculation errors run over, you can be sure. And left.
A day later the customer came to me, I replied
reported. He said thank you and set sail. More I
not seen.
Puzzles their can safely carry with me - I
programmer is not the last. A program that I have
not just shoot. And on machines with large word length, and
double precision, and errors in it was looking for, and others
showed, programmers and mathematicians. The answer said -
4.00000223. That's train.
And you thought - if a deuce deuce to multiply,
how much will it?
nly be?
