Comment on OMG: Our Machinery GuidebookparentComments−chrisseaton6yWhat practical problems do you think this could cause in specifying or measuring time?−bobdobbs6666yThe patriot missile system tended to miss due to numerical error accumulated due to using floats to count time.http://www-users.math.umn.edu/~arnold//disasters/patriot.htm...−chrisseaton6ydue to using floatsNo they weren't using floats. The article you've linked to says this really clearly.This calculation was performed using a 24 bit fixed point register−bobdobbs6666yhttp://www.cs.unc.edu/~smp/COMP205/LECTURES/ERROR/lec23/node...They meant fixed precision not fixed point math.
Comments
What practical problems do you think this could cause in specifying or measuring time?
The patriot missile system tended to miss due to numerical error accumulated due to using floats to count time.
http://www-users.math.umn.edu/~arnold//disasters/patriot.htm...
No they weren't using floats. The article you've linked to says this really clearly.
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~smp/COMP205/LECTURES/ERROR/lec23/node...
They meant fixed precision not fixed point math.