Floating-point arithmetic: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:30, 20 June 2025

Revision as of 00:01, 30 June 2025

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=== Incidents ===

* On 25 February 1991, a [[loss of significance]] in a [[MIM-104 Patriot]] missile battery [[MIM-104 Patriot#Failure at Dhahran|prevented it from intercepting]] an incoming [[Al Hussein (missile)|Scud]] missile in [[Dhahran]], [[Saudi Arabia]], contributing to the death of 28 soldiers from the U.S. Army's [[14th Quartermaster Detachment]].<ref name="GAO report IMTEC 92-26"/> The error was actually introduced by a [[Fixed-point arithmetic|fixed-point]] computation,<ref name="Skeel"/> but the underlying issue would have been the same with floating-point arithmetic.

* {{Clarify|date=November 2024|reason=It is not clear how this is an incident (the section title may have to be modified to cover more than incidents) and how this is due to floating-point arithmetic (rather than number approximations in general). The term '"invisible'" may also be misleading without following explanations. |text=[[Salami slicing tactics#Financial schemes|Salami slicing]] is the practice of removing the 'invisible' part of a transaction into a separate account.}}

=== Machine precision and backward error analysis ===