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[Slightly OT]: More on ints and floats

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters mertz at gnosis.cx
Tue Apr 8 14:03:05 EDT 2003 
Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote previously:
|I am unclear, though, on whether a mathematician understands
|1.0 to mean 1.0000000... (a single number) or the _neighborhood_
|around 1 with one digit precision.

It depends what type of mathematician (and what mathematical context).
"Pure" math deals with approximations and confidence levels less often
than does applied math.  So in those areas, mathematicians are likely to
have a first thought of Real or Rational numbers.  In statistics,
however, I assume every mathematician would read 1.0 as both a number
and a precision.

Yours, Lulu...

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