RE: [boost] Math constants for naive and gurus? - which constants do you want?

From: Paul A. Bristow (boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-10-29 14:09:29

Seriously:  complex must be a serious candidate here?

If we are to compete with C and FORTRAN, we must deal with the range of
complex numbers.

Paul

PS

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Greg Colvin [mailto:gcolvin_at_[hidden]]
> Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 12:12 AM
> To: boost_at_[hidden]
> Subject: Re: [boost] Math constants for naive and gurus? - which
> constants do you want?
>
>
> From: Fernando Cacciola <fcacciola_at_[hidden]>
> > From: Noah Stein <noah_at_[hidden]>
> > > From: Ed Brey [mailto:edbrey_at_[hidden]]
> > > ...
> > > > in boost::math would be fine.  Of course, I find the concept of
> > > > representing an irrational number using a rational class kind of
> > > > amusing, but I suppose it might have practical value.
> > >
> > > Maybe there should be an irrational number class?  I should
> think it would
> > > only take minutes for somebody to come up with an exact
> representation of
> > pi
> > > or e in such a class.  :-)
> > >
> > Both rational and irrational numbers (real numbers) are typically
> > approximated with floating point types.
> > And typically, there is a class named something like big_float
> or real to
> > support extended or arbitrary precision real number approximations.
> >
> > We have a bigint, a rational, even an interval (it's in the
> files section);
> > so what we need is a big_float<> class. Anyone?
> >
> > Seriously, I think we might really need a big_float<> class before users
> > start to believe that rational<bigint> can be used as a
> replacement for long
> > double for higher precision needs; this isn't the correct usage of a
> > rational class.
> >
> > BTW, there isn't any *exact* representation of pi,e, etc.. because they
> > don't have an *exact* value :)
>
> I think Noah was joking, but your points are well taken.
>
> I was using constant<rational>(pi) just as an example, and
> constant<mongo_real>(pi) would do just as well.
>
>
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