alt.hn

3/11/2026 at 11:24:22 PM

What every computer scientist should know about floating-point arithmetic (1991) [pdf]

https://www.itu.dk/~sestoft/bachelor/IEEE754_article.pdf

by jbarrow

3/16/2026 at 4:23:12 AM

What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic (1991) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23665529 - June 2020 (85 comments)

What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3808168 - April 2012 (3 comments)

What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1982332 - Dec 2010 (14 comments)

What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1746797 - Oct 2010 (2 comments)

Weekend project: What Every Programmer Should Know About FP Arithmetic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1257610 - April 2010 (9 comments)

What every computer scientist should know about floating-point arithmetic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=687604 - July 2009 (2 comments)

by tomhow

3/16/2026 at 1:06:36 PM

For anyone turned off by this document and its proofs, I recommend Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers (Hamming). Still a math text, but more approachable.

The five key ideas from that book, enumerated by the author:

(1) the purpose of computing is insight, not numbers

(2) study families and relationships of methods, not individual algorithms

(3) roundoff error

(4) truncation error

(5) instability

by randusername