From: mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de   
      
   On 2022-12-14 16:41, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:   
   > On 2022-12-14 16:18, Richard Heathfield wrote:   
   >   
   >>> BTW, averaging floats is a nasty problem too. A naive implementation   
   >>> quickly loses precision.   
   >>   
   >> We're dealing with 'o'clock' and "HH:MM", and nowadays we have 64-bit   
   >> integer types and there are even 128-bit integers mooching around   
   >> looking for a reason to exist. You'd have to average a hell of a lot   
   >> of times even to /need/ floats, let alone lose significant precision.   
   >   
   > I never suggested float for averaging time stamps, I pointed out that   
   > averaging is not a simple problem. E.g. try this one:   
   >   
   >     function Average (X : Float; N : Positive) return Float is   
   >        Sum : Float := 0.0;   
   >     begin   
   >        for Index in 1..N loop   
   >           Sum := Sum + X;   
   >        end loop;   
   >        return Sum / Float (N);   
   >     end Average;   
   >   
   > The function does naive averaging. For simplicity it just sums up the   
   > same number X N times and divides by N.   
   >   
   >     Average (1.0, 17_000_000)  = 0.986895   
   >     Average (1.0, 100_000_000) = 0.167772   
   >     Average (1.0, 200_000_000) = 0.838861   
                                       0.0838861   
      
   The error is obviously systematic.   
      
   --   
   Regards,   
   Dmitry A. Kazakov   
   http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)