Well, that's what I'm fighting against: looking good. The good looking float are putting plenty of traps on our path, and it's better to know about it. I say that it's impossible to maintain the illusion of good looking and friendly float, and in that case it's better to tell the awfull truth. The changes in Squeak/Pharo are here to un-learn what we thought about decimal numbers, or more accurately to learn that these rules don't apply exactly to Float.
Beside, in most languages, if you round the float/double 0.995 to 2 digits - either by a printf or another operation like round(0.995 , 2) - you'll get 0.99 not 1.00.
Nicolas
2013/3/29 Louis LaBrunda Lou@keystone-software.com
Hi Nicolas,
Sorry to be getting back to this so late. I take back what I said about asTrueFraction. I'm sure it is fine. But I think I question its use in this case.
This all started when Stéphane said this:
0.995 printShowingDecimalPlaces: 2 ==> '1.00'
was wrong and I didn't think so.
When one uses a method like printShowingDecimalPlaces: one expects (maybe there is some other similar method that one should expect this) the result to look good (yes that is very subjective) but I would say looking good is more important than being accurate. Yes, that is an admission that asTrueFraction is the accurate way to convert floats. Looking good would mean rounded nicely.
Maybe I'm expecting printShowingDecimalPlaces: to be something it isn't intended to be but I don't see any other similar method that would perform the pretty way.
Lou
On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:11:41 +0100, Nicolas Cellier nicolas.cellier.aka.nice@gmail.com wrote:
2013/3/26 Louis LaBrunda Lou@keystone-software.com:
Hi Nicolas,
snip...
In VA Smalltalk:
0.995 = 0.995s3 => true 0.995 < 0.995s3 => false
This is a default st80 behavior which converts minimumGenerality number to maximumGenerality.
In VA when one converts 0.995 to decimal, one gets 0.995s15, which when compared to 0.995s3 is equal. And when 0.995s3 is converted to float
that
float compares equal to 0.995.
Maybe some of these conventions are hardwired in VM, I don't know, but in other dialects it's handled at image side.
The idea was this one: if you perform an operation between an inexact value and an exact value, the result is inexact. So Float + * / - Integer,Fraction,ScaledDecimal will result into a
Float.
Thus Float got a higher generality.
This would imply that one should convert the ScaledDecimal to a Float before the compare. But as above that would not change things (I think maybe because VA uses 8 byte floats).
This is from Squeak:
0.995s3 asFloat 0.995
0.995s3 asFloat = 0.995 true
0.995 asScaledDecimal 0.99499999s8
(995 / 1000) asScaledDecimal 0.995s3
0.995 asTrueFraction asScaledDecimal 0.99499999999999999555910790149937383830547332763671875s53
(0.995 * 1000000000) asScaledDecimal / 1000000000 0.99500000s8
Yep, but (0.995 * 1000000000) is inexact... You can check that (0.995 * 1000000000) ~~ (0.995 asFraction * 1000000000)
You cannot rely on results of any such inexact calculus, or you'll be building on sand.
0.995 * 1000000000 9.95e8
Sorry, but I have run out of time to play at the moment. So, I will
just
throw a thought out there. I think there may be a problem with asTrueFraction. Which if implemented differently might not make 0.995 < 0.995s3.
Well I doubt, but I'm all ears ;)
(0.995 asFraction storeStringBase: 2) ->
'(2r11111110101110000101000111101011100001010001111010111/2r100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)'.
(0.995 successor) asFraction storeStringBase: 2 ->
'(2r11111110101110000101000111101011100001010001111011/2r100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)'
->
'(2r11111110101110000101000111101011100001010001111011000/2r100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)'.
(0.995 predecessor) asFraction storeStringBase: 2 ->
'(2r1111111010111000010100011110101110000101000111101011/2r10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)'
->
'(2r11111110101110000101000111101011100001010001111010110/2r100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)'.
0.995 ulp asFraction storeStringBase: 2 -> '(2r1/2r100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)'.
(995/1000 - 0.995 asFraction) / 0.995 ulp -> 0.04.
(995/1000 - 0.995 successor asFraction) / 0.995 ulp -> -0.96.
(995/1000 - 0.995 successor asFraction) / 0.995 ulp -> 1.04.
and numerator/denominator have this property:
2r11111110101110000101000111101011100001010001111010111 highBit -> 53. 2r100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 highBit -> 54.
So, 53 bits of significand, a power of two on denominator, that sounds like a correct Float, slightly smaller than 1. Next significand and previous significand are both further of (995/1000) than 0.995 is. 0.995 is closest Float to 995/1000 and is smaller than 995/1000, no doubt.
Nicolas
The idea behind Squeak change is that every Float has an exact value (asTrueFraction). Since we have only two possible answers true/false for comparison, and no maybe or dontKnow, it makes sense to compare the exact value. This reduces the number of paradoxal equalities
| a b c | a := 1 << Float precision. b := a + 1. c := a asFloat. { c = b. c = a. a = b. }
In VW and VA, the first two are true, the last is false, which suggests that = is not an equivalence relation. In Squeak, only the second one is true.
Same with inequalities, we expect (a < b) & (a = c) ==> (c < b) etc... This is still true in Squeak, not in VA/VW/st80. I think gst and Dolphin and maybe stx adopted Squeak behavior (to be
confirmed).
I think in VA Smalltalk there is some VM magic going on that makes the above work the way it does. The #= and #< of Float are implemented
in a
primitive. I guess when converting the '0.995' string to a float a
little
is lost and that would make it less than 0.995s3 but there is a lot
of code
floating around (sorry about the puns) to make floats look better.
In that
case I would think people would want (0.995
printShowingDecimalPlaces: 2)
to show '1.00' and not '0.99'.
No, people should not rely on such behavior with Floats, because sooner than later they will be bitten. We cannot cheat very long with this kind of assumptions. My POV is that it is better to educate about false expectations with Float, and that's the main benefit of (1/10) ~= 0.1.
I would add that such print policy is not the behaviour of every other language I know of.
printf( "%.2f",0.995) -> 0.99
Because libm are carefully written nowdays and other languages libraries are either built over libm or much more careful than Smalltalk were (that mostly means more recent).
Anyway, we should try not to use floats without a very, very good
reason.
Like we have to send them outside of Smalltalk or we really need the
speed
or decimals and fractions take up too much memory. But then we must
live
with their inaccuracies and display mess.
Good advice, let's put those expectations on decimal fractions (ScaledDecimal/FixedPoint) or general Fraction.
I have an untested theory that fractions can be close in speed to
floats
because divisions (that are expensive) can be pushed to the end of a computation because with fractions they are multiplies.
Lou
Why not, but huge numerators and denominators are not cheap compared to Float operations. OK reducing the fraction is the expensive part, but how does the cost grow versus the length of operands?
Also some geometric operations are not even possible on Q (hypot) so you might soon need AlgebraicNumber. And Smalltalk is also about graphics and geometry.
Nicolas
Louis LaBrunda Keystone Software Corp. SkypeMe callto://PhotonDemon mailto:Lou@Keystone-Software.com http://www.Keystone-Software.com
Louis LaBrunda Keystone Software Corp. SkypeMe callto://PhotonDemon mailto:Lou@Keystone-Software.com http://www.Keystone-Software.com
Louis LaBrunda Keystone Software Corp. SkypeMe callto://PhotonDemon mailto:Lou@Keystone-Software.com http://www.Keystone-Software.com