Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T10:26:03.145Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

On Squeezing Tables

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2016

Extract

We live in days when more than ordinary care is taken to extract from jam-pots, gardens, dust-bins and ourselves the maximum of productivity; and in such times why should mathematical tables be exempt from the general squeeze? To all of us, I suppose, there come moments when we say “For this calculation I wish I had tables giving more figures”: such cases occur especially when anything is found as the difference of two much larger quantities, in which a small percentage-error may appear greatly magnified in their difference (weighing the ship’s cat by the displacements before and after she fell overboard). I shall outline here and attempt to justify the least laborious that I know of methods by which the inevitable approximation-errors can be cut down to a much smaller mean than is involved in using the crude values as printed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1943

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Page 66 of note * Not given in any books which I have seen; but this is slender evidence for claiming it as a new discovery.