3 pointsby fouronnes33 hours ago1 comment
  • fouronnes32 hours ago
    Author here. Outward rounding to combat precision issues is what interval arithmetic is most known for (try 0.1+0.2 with "full precision mode" enabled), but that's really a shame in my opinion. Outward rounding is cool, but the "inclusion property", as it's known in research papers, works at every scale! This is what enables things like:

         50 * (10 + [-1, 1])
        [450, 550]
    
    which is lovely, I think. Adding the union layer to it enables even cooler things, like the true inverse of the square function. Did you know it's not sqrt? Try 'sqinv(64)'.

    I made interval calculator actually mostly as a way to test my implementation of interval union arithmetic [0], which I needed for another project: a backwards updating spreadsheet [1][2].

    [0] https://github.com/victorpoughon/not-so-float

    [1] https://victorpoughon.github.io/bidicalc/

    [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46234734