Back in the dark ages, when I was in school, we were "encouraged" to take a
numerical analysis course if we were interested in computers. (I was an EE
major.) It was not an easy topic, but it made us well aware of the
difference between correct results and computational precision. I was
recently astonished to find that most computer science students have no
concept of this area and even less interest in it.

These current thoughts extend to other areas:

- C is more accurate than Fortran (or Basic, or what whatever)
- Obtaining "stable" numeric results means you get the same answer if
you run the program twice
- C produces the fastest programs
- if C is good then C++ is better
- Using all the obscure C operators produces a better program

(Anyone remember the IBM 7030 system? The user could control the rounding
direction of the floating point LSB. In this case running a program twice
(with different rounding options) really was relevant.)

Bill
W2WO