Timeline for What does a half-digit mean in case of accuracy?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 25, 2022 at 4:09 | comment | added | hobbs | If there was truth in advertising, a 3½ digit meter would be able to read from 0 to 3162. | |
| Oct 30, 2016 at 1:46 | comment | added | Nayuki | @RussellMcMahon "all other positive binary numbers can be written with their left most digit truncated" - this fact is very much exploited by the IEEE 754 floating-point standard. They are called "normalized" floating-point numbers! | |
| Apr 8, 2014 at 16:04 | comment | added | Russell McMahon♦ | @supercat It was a light hearted comment - but applies to binary numbers and not base 10 meters. The point they made was that ALL positive binary numbers greater than 0 have a leading 1 digit (as a leading 0 can be removed) so I was simply noting that the leading 1 is superfluous as all BINARY numbers > 0 have it. You can't include 0 & 1 in the range as 10 becomes 0 and 11 becomes 1 when the leading 1 is removed BUT it works for all numbers >= 10. ie 10-> 0, 11 -> 1, 100 -> 00 (hmm , whoops - OK as long as you write the leading 0's), 101-> 01, 10 -> 10 etc. | |
| Apr 7, 2014 at 15:09 | comment | added | supercat | @RussellMcMahon: That assumption only holds if the exponent is variable. On many meters, it's useful to be able to lock the exponent (e.g. if reading signals that are between 1 and 3 volts, one may wish to stay on the 19.99 range); for that to work, the leading digits must be viewed as significant. | |
| Apr 7, 2014 at 12:42 | comment | added | Russell McMahon♦ | @supercat As a bonus from your reference I see that IF you exclude values 0 & 1 then all other positive binary numbers can be written with their left most digit truncated. eg 1011 can be safely represented by 011. How to deal with 0 & 1, and what practical use may be made of this 'fact' are TBD :-). | |
| Mar 1, 2012 at 21:17 | comment | added | supercat | Incidentally, see blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2005/01/12/… for an interesting and relevant observation: if one picks a physical quantity at random, the first digit is more likely to be a 1 than either a 2-3, and almost as likely to be in the range 1-3 as in the range 4-9. | |
| Sep 20, 2011 at 17:12 | history | edited | Brian Carlton | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Removed Tex for numbers that made it harder to read.
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| Sep 20, 2011 at 11:27 | vote | accept | Dumbo | ||
| Sep 20, 2011 at 10:24 | history | edited | stevenvh | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 607 characters in body
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| Sep 20, 2011 at 10:18 | comment | added | stevenvh | @Seaņ - added to my answer. | |
| Sep 20, 2011 at 10:18 | history | edited | stevenvh | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 607 characters in body
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| Sep 20, 2011 at 10:07 | comment | added | Dumbo | Thanks, So is that 1/2 or 3/4 has something to do with MSB? why 1/2 is 0 or 1? and 3/4 is 0 to 3? | |
| Sep 20, 2011 at 9:58 | history | answered | stevenvh | CC BY-SA 3.0 |