Bug report: Math is hard
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Just got a massive spreadsheet, with a few examples that work and a couple where the programs shows the "wrong" value. After spending 10 minutes or so trying to understand what that spreadsheet means, it boiled down to:
"The program, which shows a number which should be a total of 119.78 and 20.62, shows 140.42* rather than the expected 119.34."
My resposne?
* the .02 difference is due to known problems with their calculations, namely that they can't grasp the concept of powers and try to use multiplication and division instead.
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The mind boggles, the flabber gasts. Why would anyway expect the total of two positive numbers to be smaller? Why can't they see that 119.something plus 20.something must be about 140? What part of total went wrong in their minds: to? tal?
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Oh my gosh, the bug is in Microsoft's calculator, too? It must be somewhere in a shared library!
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See? The same bug exists in this "Calculator" program you are using. Let's see if any other code is affected by it...
[url=https://www.google.ca/search?q=119.78+plus+20.62]Holy crap there's the bug again[/url]! They must all be using the same buggy library or something.
I'm going to try using a pencil and paper... Whoah! No wonder we're getting the wrong answer so often, everybody probably based their code on the broken implementation in this pencil. Contact the QA people, tell them to get boxes of pencils and paper from every supplier we have and see if any of them exhibit the same floating point bug.
This looks important, we should make sure to tell everybody about this and make sure that our company name is associated with finding this problem. This could be bigger than the microchip!
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There's got to be some misunderstanding somewhere.
I need to know their response!
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@configurator said:
"The program, which shows a number which should be a total of 119.78 and 20.62, shows 140.42* rather than the expected 119.34."
You work for Enron, by any chance?
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@dhromed said:
(random tags like "mini nukes" and stuff)
what is the use of the tags you put on your posts?
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@_leonardo_ said:
@dhromed said:
(random tags like "mini nukes" and stuff)
what is the use of the tags you put on your posts?
You must be new here.
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@DescentJS said:
Filed under: Expecting sense from tags is a sure sign of inexperience with this place
Hey, the tags make perfect sense. It's the context that's missing.
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@DescentJS said:
@_leonardo_ said:
@dhromed said:
(random tags like "mini nukes" and stuff)
what is the use of the tags you put on your posts?
You must be new here.
The answer was right there:
personal obsession
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@_leonardo_ said:
what is the use of the tags you put on your posts?
I have a greasemonkey script with a large and categorically diverse set of lemmas, which are automatically randomly selected for use.
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@aihtdikh said:
The answer was right there:
personal obsessionAnd I don't even do wacky tobacky. I just lol'd when someone on another forum used the term.
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Reality Error: Abort, Retry, or Fail ?
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@Cassidy said:
Nah - I'm guessing Intel.@configurator said:
"The program, which shows a number which should be a total of 119.78 and 20.62, shows 140.42* rather than the expected 119.34."
You work for Enron, by any chance?
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@dhromed said:
you forgot
KarkatPoland.
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@dhromed said:
I was expecting someone to say that.@Zecc said:
That is all.
No, you forgot Karkat.
No, I don't think you're predictable.
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@dhromed said:
@_leonardo_ said:
what is the use of the tags you put on your posts?
I have a greasemonkey script with a large and categorically diverse set of lemmas, which are automatically randomly selected for use.
That's it! I just had to re-install my script that automatically selects a certain number of the most relevant tags for a post.
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@Cassidy said:
@dhromed said:
I am interested in the workings of your script.
As am I.
So one day, I downloaded some weird web crawler and made it download ALL the threads on TDWTF. I used this data to analyze the frequency of each word's usage. I converted the list of words that have been used ten or more times to JSON* along with their frequency. When I hit a button, the script takes all the words of the post (HTML and the "quote" BBCode tags are stripped) and rates each one, taking the count of the word divided by its frequency. If a word doesn't occur in my word list, a heuristic is used that is always less than 10 and takes word length into account. Then, it takes the full list of tags and rates each tag according to the words it consists of. The ten best tags are used. (I modified it earlier today to only use tags with a certain minimum rating, so there may sometimes be less than ten tags)
- Sadly, the inclusion of this list means that userscript.org blocks it for being possible spam.
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*bows and backs hurriedly away, attempting to stuff pockets full of goodness*
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@Cassidy said:
bows and backs hurriedly away, attempting to stuff pockets full of goodness
keeps watching Cassidy, his eyes seeming to stare directly into their soul. with a stern expression, he watches the despicable worm crawl and gather its loot. immovably, he doesn't take his eyes off the creature and progresses to appear more and more menacing. finally, as if to visualize the coronation of a tyrant, he slowly starts to raise the corners of his mouth to a vile, and frightening grin. if Cassidy hasn't taken flight yet, he would burst into a roaring laughter which would sound like a thousand dying hippopotamus bewailing their sad fates to the god of the woods.
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*offers lint-stained cookie from pocket, hastily*
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SHIT! Wong cookie! Noooooo!
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@bjolling said:
@Cassidy said:
SHIT! Wong cookie! Noooooo!
If prefer wong cookies over wang cookies anytimeI dunno, every time I eat a Wong cookie, Excel clears its undo stack, so I try to avoid them.
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@derula said:
every time I eat a Wong cookie, Excel clears its undo stack
Last cookie I ate it cleared my stack pretty quickly.
I blame the icing. Sugar should not be #00ff00.
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@Cassidy said:
I blame the icing. Sugar should not be #00ff00.
Or #0000ff.
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@dkf said:
@Cassidy said:
I've seen quite a few cookies that had frosting in a beautiful shade of #ff00ffI blame the icing. Sugar should not be #00ff00.
Or #0000ff.
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@Ben L. said:
I've seen quite a few cookies that had frosting in a beautiful shade of #ff00ff
if a cookie is worth eating, it doesn't need frosting. Just dipping in dark chocolate...
