Re: [asa] mistake and slide rule

The joke is that a well taught college Mathematics student would
recognize immediately that e^pi-pi could not possibly be an integer. The
mathematicians are having a joke at the expense of the computer programmers!
Don

Collin Brendemuehl wrote:
> There seems to be a mathematics joke here that I just don't get.
> But my bother-in-law, Ron, teaches college math.
> Perhaps he will see the humor.
>
> Or can someone just explain it?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Iain Strachan [mailto:igd.strachan@gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, June 9, 2008 11:32 AM
> To: 'Alexanian, Moorad'
> Cc: 'George Cooper', asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: [asa] mistake and slide rule
>
> A good test of the accuracy of early calculators is to compute e^pi - pi. It should come out as 20. If it comes out as 19.999... you probably have a poor floating point handler in the calculator.... :-)
>
> See the cartoon on my blogsite:
>
> http://iainstrachan.blogspot.com/2008/05/geek-joke.html
>
>

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Received on Mon Jun 9 19:15:01 2008