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Comment on Anon describes experience

Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

We had computer classes where we had to learn about spreadsheets.

To do a number plus ten percent we had to put in A1+A1*10/100

I did A1*1.1 like a normal person.

She then went round to make sure everyone had put it in correctly. Got annoyed at me and changed A1 to something else to expose my folly.

Was visibly annoyed when it showed the right answer.

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needanke@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
(I don’t think taht was your teachers point at all, but) couldn’t the fifferent formulas produced different rounding errors due to floating point percision?

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- funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Excel has a 15 point float, a quadrillionth, which should be enough for anything you were using excel for.
  
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  - gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    yeah because excel does rounding stuff automatically for you
    
    try entering 0.1 + 0.2 - 0.1 - 0.2 == 0.0 in any programming language of your choice and see what happens.
    
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- Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Doubtful, but if anything mine would be more accurate. Fewer calculation steps to lose precision on. I think most spreadsheet software fudges floating point precision anyway. A computer programmer may accept that 0.1+0.2 is not 0.3 but an accountant or mathematician would not be having it.
  
  I think she was just shit at maths tbh. As a kid you sort of assume all the teachers know more than you about every subject, and that’s not the case at all.
  
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  - gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    As a kid you sort of assume all the teachers know more than you about every subject, and that’s not the case at all.
    
    same for chatgpt
    
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