Re: Looking for a review manager for Real

From: Kostas Savvidis (kotika98_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-09-05 16:03:31

> On Sep 5, 2020, at 03:02, Damian Vicino via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>> 
> There is actually not much overlap with other libraries, it may in the
> implementation details be some overlap with boost::interval arithmetic, but
> not in the goals or features exposed.
> 
> The goal in Real is to evaluate expressions that the required precision to
> evaluate them accurately is unknown in advance and explores how to achieve
> perfect accuracy for the evaluation, or fails noisily.

I am planning to do a full review, and certainly will try to see whether it can evaluate some hard numerical expressions.
Unfortunately, it is clear already that the documentation is severely lacking. 
My suggestion right now is to delay the start of the review until we have proper documentation.

Range arithmetic is useful mainly for two purposes:
1) numeric analysis of algorithms - to determine the accuracy of the final result given a finite accuracy of the input quantities.
This sounds close enough to what you describe as your goal, so saying that your library does something different is strange.

2) in pure math - to derive strict bounds on the value of some trig and special functions.
Your library cannot (yet?), but other range libraries can do it, notably the Arb library http://arblib.org.

On 9/4/20 12:05 PM, sehe via Boost wrote:
> Glanced over the library, and was wondering how much overlap there is
> with:
>  - Boost Interval Arithmetic Library
>    (https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_74_0/libs/numeric/interval/doc/interval.htm <https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_74_0/libs/numeric/interval/doc/interval.htm>) which AFAIK is a part of Boost Numeric
>  - Boost Interval Container Library

The Interval Container Library has no relation with this business at all, it is about treating time slots for accounting software.
Safe Numerics also has nothing to do with this, so any comparisons should be with Boost.Interval and Arb (which is in C).

Best Regards,
Kostas Savvidis

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