You may’ve learned significant figures in Chemistry class. But did you know that computer scientists have units for sig-figs? They’re called the uld and ulp
President Fogg clearly doesn’t understand these concepts. In many cases, uld and ulp are the same. But a lot of times, computers can only increment (increase) a given variable by, say, fives, instead of ones, in which case, the ulp will be five times larger than the uld. Also, computers can calculate π to at least 1,000 places; however, MS Calculator will only display the constant up to 32 digits. In this case, the uld is larger than the ulp. I’ll try to clarify this later.
All contents of this website are, unless stated otherwise, copyright © 2002-2003 Minh Nguyen.
