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Rounding versus truncation estimates in difference calculations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2019

Leonard van Wyk*
Affiliation:
Dept. of Mathematics & Statistics, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

Extract

Two common methods of approximating difference problems are by rounding or truncating the minuend and the subtrahend before calculating the difference. Since rounding generally gives a better approximation of a number than truncation, one might expect that rounding also generally gives a better approximation in difference problems. We show that intuition to be false.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© Mathematical Association 2019 

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