I was rummaging around in the source of R looking for trouble, as one does, when I came across what I believed to be a less than optimally accurate floating-point algorithm (function R_pos_di in src/main/arithemtic.c). Analyzing the accuracy of floating-point code is notoriously difficult and ... [Read more...]

What is the best way to compare the quality of floating-point math libraries (e.g., sin, cos and log)? The traditional approach for evaluating the quality of an algorithm implementing a mathematical function is based on mathematics; methods have been developed to calculate the maximum error between the calculated and ... [Read more...]