Scripting competition results

[Mark Wieder]

Monday, May 11, 2009, 11:53:25 PM, Andre Garzia wrote:

> yes that is it, 3 lines... I know it to be running accurate up to
> fib(65) then very accurate until fib(70), then it overflows
> somewhere... silly powers, always exploding my integers.

and Jim Bufalini wrote:

> But, it only works to a precision of 16 digits (both the integer and
> fraction portions). After that it's rounded (the rest are zeros). So you
> can't get to 211. And, due to rounding, it gets inaccurate much earlier at
> 71 (or more accurately, starts getting rounded). But, at least it's 0
> milliseconds in all cases ;-)

and Scott Rossi wrote:

> There's no decimals involved (unless you use a formula, which I've been
> trying to do) so what limitation is the computer running up against?

...and that, of course, is the focus of this exercise. Coming off the
heels of the thread about rounding issues at the extreme small end of
decimals and margin-or-error issues, it shows that there are limits at
the big end as well. Once you've reached the limits of what the
computer can do you have to take things into your own hands, no matter
whether it's due to quantization effects at the low end or overflow
effects at the high end.

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwieder at ahsoftware.net