scream - How much will it ...?

(C) A. Ashkenazi
Music: ORANGE BUGY RMX (C) Mr.Z / LS (R) DGN



             How much will it?



     I - the programmer.

     Comes as a client to me, he wrote, said, programs, would 
like to count. Take. The program is small. What, I ask, it 
should give? Yes, a little, said one number. Look in aaplet - 
Stone Age. The era of stone axes. Learn, ask yourself? Looked 
down the client and says - from books.


     I planted this nonsense the next day in the car, she 
blinked for a moment and type: 


                0.40000023E01.

In the Russian translation - is 4.0000023. Strange, but a 
number. Do not mistake the account ran up? All the same 
machine, look, sixty-nine-tail seconds labored, and she, by the 
way, we do not the accounts of the stone throwing. Seventy 
seconds of CPU time - it's almost a hundred million operations. 
Found in double precision. Issued: 


                0.40000022E01.

Well, well, a reasonable refinement. Hence, no
error calculation.

     It seemed funny to me, I began to understand the program. 
It is understandable because that is unknown a task the answer 
can be arbitrary. But if he is from whole number to two 
millions of different, there is a natural suspicion that the 
answer is and should be be an integer. A difference - some kind 
of error. 

     The program of course, I figured out special tricks in it 
are not found. Double rows of companion summed up, and then 
there just was not - and hyperbolic functions, and Bessel. I 
suspect all of this thought. Call a friend mathematics. He 
looked at the books and says - no rows in your books, wait an 
hour or so, I had them myself poobdumayu. Through two o'clock 
to call - your ranks, says you can take. But I persuaded him to 
come. He looked print and immediately became serious. Until the 
morning we had sat. All true, but twenty-two ten millionth do 
arise. At six o'clock he had finished his coffee, stood up and 
said - go home, I was about ten at the institute is necessary. 
This calculation errors run over, you can be sure. And left. 

     A day later the customer came to me, I replied
reported. He said thank you and set sail. More I
not seen.

     Puzzles their can safely carry with me - I
programmer is not the last. A program that I have
not just shoot. And on machines with large word length, and 
double precision, and errors in it was looking for, and others 
showed, programmers and mathematicians. The answer said - 
4.00000223. That's train. 


    And you thought - if a deuce deuce to multiply,
how much will it?



nly be?