16 Mar
1998
16 Mar
'98
3:21 p.m.
In article <Pine.LNX.3.95.980316132720.19589A-
100000(a)behemoth.host4u.net>gt;, Doug Yowza <yowza(a)yowza.com> writes
To be fair, analog computers can do things digital
computers can't. For
example, a digital computer can only approximate 1.0/3.0 whereas an
analog box has no trouble with this. Certain ops would also be much
faster with analog vs. digital, but I'd have to guess that these are
implementation issues that get lost in the noise.
But a digital computer can
represent rational numbers exactly as you
have (e.g. Smalltalk has a rational data type which behaves just like
any other number) but irrational numbers cause problems. But then can
an analogue machine represent irrational numbers exactly?
--
Lawrence Wilkinson ljw(a)formula1.demon.co.uk
The GirlFrendo homepage: http://www.formula1.demon.co.uk/girlfrendo/
"You've got the brains, or so you say, maybe you see things another
way"-bis