Error Propagation

While the errors in single floating-point numbers are very small, even simple calculations on them can contain pitfalls that increase the error in the result way beyond just having the individual errors “add up”.

In general:

There is an entire sub-field of mathematics (in numerical analysis) devoted to studying the numerical stability of algorithms. For doing complex calculations involving floating-point numbers, it is absolutely necessary to have some understanding of this discipline.

The article What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic gives a detailed introduction, and served as an inspiration for creating this website, mainly due to being a bit too detailed and intimidating to programmers without a scientific background.

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