Re: Floating point type to store numbers

Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 17, 2007 at 04:33:33PM -0400, Radhika Sambamurti wrote:
>> Andrew,
>> This has been quite helpful. My main concern is CPU cost. Thanks for the
>> input.
>
> You're welcome. Are you sure your main concern should be CPU cost?
> It's true that numeric is more costly that float in a lot of cases,
> but I know at least one auditor who will refuse to certify results
> from programs that anywhere use floating-point storage or calculation
> on accounting data. The problem is really that you can get compound
> errors -- very small rounding errors several times can turn out to be
> a big problem. (One quick primer that can help you understand this
> is at <http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/decifaq1.html>.)

Would you rather have wrong answers really, really fast, or right answers fast
enough?

--
Lew