Re: Storing trailing zeros in mantissa

Noons wrote:

> <ctcgag_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:20030801122021.888$dk_at_newsreader.com...
>
> Then why bother with storing the thing as a NUMBER in
> the first place? I mean, if what is important is the
> number of significant digits and NUMBER(4,2) is not
> enough to carry that? Last time I looked, 10.20
> is not more significant than 10.2, in any mathematics
> system. But I may be wrong. Fixed point arithmetic
> is not the same as significant digits.

Significant digits represent the error potential in a totally analog system. To a person who is recording measurements, 10.20 implies a potential error in the 3rd decimal and can represent a measurement between 10.195 and 10.205 (or 10.20 +/- .005) whereas 10.2 represents 10.15 to 10.25 (10.2 +/- .05)

If in a scientific arena, the OP might really be looking for the value (eg: 10.2) and the error range (+/- .005) and actual range of that last can be subject to some debate (is it -.005 to +.005, or -.0050 to +.0040 or ....)

In any case, OP might want to consider creating a UDT for this purpose - wasn't this the reason user defined objects were made available????? Received on Fri Aug 01 2003 - 21:44:54 CDT