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1996-05-22 - Re: Floating Point and Financial Software

Header Data

From: “Perry E. Metzger” <perry@piermont.com>
To: mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos)
Message Hash: 05f28b0c173d0dac4add612c09edbb03bf3f2d7b5e171b51f85009845e76602d
Message ID: <199605221706.NAA23567@jekyll.piermont.com>
Reply To: <199605221618.JAA04180@netcom7.netcom.com>
UTC Datetime: 1996-05-22 22:51:03 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 06:51:03 +0800

Raw message

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 06:51:03 +0800
To: mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos)
Subject: Re: Floating Point and Financial Software
In-Reply-To: <199605221618.JAA04180@netcom7.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199605221706.NAA23567@jekyll.piermont.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Mike Duvos writes:
> There seem to be a few mini-flames on the list over whether
> floating point data representations are appropriate for financial
> software.
> 
> In a nutshell, the answer is "YES", and the use of floating point
> arithmetic is common in such applications.

Again, I have seen floating point used for things like rates and in
simulations. I have never seen it used for accounting. If you can
name a system in which accounts were kept in floats I'd like to hear
about it -- personally I'd be surprised. I've never seen such a thing.

.pm

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