>>9
What if my job is calculating crows through a window?
Name:
Anonymous2009-04-17 13:52
For example, a value [of pi] truncated to 11 decimal places is accurate enough to calculate the circumference of a circle the size of the earth with a precision of a millimeter, and one truncated to 39 decimal places is sufficient to compute the circumference of any circle that fits in the observable universe to a precision comparable to the size of a hydrogen atom.
A double precision floating point number truncates at around sixteen decimal places- (and this is a very naive storage method for numbers like pi and e, the significand could and should be longer than the IEEE standard). Please, I would like to hear about your real world application that requires pi to a greater accuracy than this, Sir.
>>12
What exactly do you need large factorials for?
At any rate, you could create a storage type that does arithmetic in logarithms and uses Stirling's approximation for factorials, problem solved.
Name:
Anonymous2009-04-17 14:19
>>10
Then your life sucks really bad and you should get a new job.