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In defense of 'flicks' (or how I learned to stop worrying and love 705600000)

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Re: In defense of 'flicks' (or how I learned to stop worrying and love 705600000)

#51

Post by yaccz »

333c wrote: post #35
zaroth wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you had kept reading. In the end, you nitpicked about precisely the thing which the author ended up explaining. The point about using infinite memory to store an irrational number is just a rhetorical device / presentation style to keep the novice reader engaged, and following along. And then you say, "Next we will explain how to solve this impossibility...," and such. It's a good technique for writing, and pr…

I did keep reading the article, as I say in my edit. I differ from you in my interpretation of this facet of the essay. To me, it reads as internal contradiction — the author says that it is impossible to represent 1/120 in memory and then goes on to describe a strategy for doing just that. The author does not present this conflict as "it may seem impossible…" but rather as "is is impossible." That's an inaccuracy, n…

The claim is only missing a qualification that the impossibility exists within the framework of ieee 754. It can be easily inferred from context and it is important to note because thats what the major CPU architectures use to store native floating point numbers. Therefore, the point is, we need a non-native (wrt the cpu) way to store and calculate with irrationals and some rationals if mathematical precision is required.

Re: In defense of 'flicks' (or how I learned to stop worrying and love 705600000)

#52

Post by scarejunba »

333c wrote: post #35
zaroth wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you had kept reading. In the end, you nitpicked about precisely the thing which the author ended up explaining. The point about using infinite memory to store an irrational number is just a rhetorical device / presentation style to keep the novice reader engaged, and following along. And then you say, "Next we will explain how to solve this impossibility...," and such. It's a good technique for writing, and pr…

I did keep reading the article, as I say in my edit. I differ from you in my interpretation of this facet of the essay. To me, it reads as internal contradiction — the author says that it is impossible to represent 1/120 in memory and then goes on to describe a strategy for doing just that. The author does not present this conflict as "it may seem impossible…" but rather as "is is impossible." That's an inaccuracy, n…

Mate, I mean this with the best of intentions: please reflect on your requirement for exactness and consider whether it serves you well.

I did so with mine and I concluded it did not. Perhaps you will conclude differently. Perhaps the same. In either case, I think you will find it worthwhile.

Re: In defense of 'flicks' (or how I learned to stop worrying and love 705600000)

#54

Post by SeanDav »

333c wrote: post #15

> The number result is 0.008333333333 with the 3 repeating forever. For a computer to store a number that repeats forever would require an infinite amount of memory This is very much not true, as I'm sure other HN readers will notice. The number is rational (it's equivalent to 1/120). Now, it is true that a floating point number may not be able to represent it exactly, but by no means does this number require "infini…

> The number result is 0.008333333333 with the 3 repeating forever. For a computer to store a number that repeats forever would require an infinite amount of memory

This is clearly a literary technique to create interest. Like saying something like "I told you a billion times not to exaggerate". It should be clear to most readers that this is not an attempted mathematically precise comment.

Re: In defense of 'flicks' (or how I learned to stop worrying and love 705600000)

#56

Post by phonebucket »

swiley wrote: post #36
333c wrote: post #15

> The number result is 0.008333333333 with the 3 repeating forever. For a computer to store a number that repeats forever would require an infinite amount of memory This is very much not true, as I'm sure other HN readers will notice. The number is rational (it's equivalent to 1/120). Now, it is true that a floating point number may not be able to represent it exactly, but by no means does this number require "infini…

You can represent most useful irrational numbers on computers via programs that calculate them to the required degree of precision: You can represent pi: 4*atan(1) e: log(1) Now I feel like you could make arguments about non-computable numbers, although I feel like you could still “represent” them.

Upvoted for the sentiment. Although using log(1) to represent e gives me nothing (pun intended).

Re: In defense of 'flicks' (or how I learned to stop worrying and love 705600000)

#57

Post by jwilk »

swiley wrote: post #36
333c wrote: post #15

> The number result is 0.008333333333 with the 3 repeating forever. For a computer to store a number that repeats forever would require an infinite amount of memory This is very much not true, as I'm sure other HN readers will notice. The number is rational (it's equivalent to 1/120). Now, it is true that a floating point number may not be able to represent it exactly, but by no means does this number require "infini…

You can represent most useful irrational numbers on computers via programs that calculate them to the required degree of precision: You can represent pi: 4*atan(1) e: log(1) Now I feel like you could make arguments about non-computable numbers, although I feel like you could still “represent” them.

log(1) = 0

I think you meant exp(1).

Re: In defense of 'flicks' (or how I learned to stop worrying and love 705600000)

#59

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

slimscsi wrote: post #16
333c wrote: post #15

> The number result is 0.008333333333 with the 3 repeating forever. For a computer to store a number that repeats forever would require an infinite amount of memory This is very much not true, as I'm sure other HN readers will notice. The number is rational (it's equivalent to 1/120). Now, it is true that a floating point number may not be able to represent it exactly, but by no means does this number require "infini…

Thanks for the comment. For the record, I am very aware of iee 754, And I am aware that some numbers that have infinite repetition in decimal can have an exact representation. I actually thought about pointing that out. However I decided that it didn't add much to the post. It was written for more of a general audience and diving into those details, while would make the post more technically correct, would not actual…

With all due respect, you sound like you don't understand the difference between rational and real numbers.

Also, the 'decimal' part of your comment is not needed, number base is irrelevant here.

Re: In defense of 'flicks' (or how I learned to stop worrying and love 705600000)

#60

Post by kragen »

slimscsi wrote: post #33
kragen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, wavelength is just one more dimension along which intensity may vary (in addition to X, and Y, and time), not five or six more dimensions, so a multi-band image is only three-dimensional, regardless of whether there are three wavelength bands (like RGB or YCbCr), four (like RGBA), 8 (like Landsat), or 210 (like HYDICE, AVIRIS, and other imaging spectrometers).

My point is, I am comparing temporal dimension to temporal dimension regardless of how many special dimensions there are. And I don’t understand the argument that an audio sample is more analogous to a pixel that it is a frame on a time line.

It's analogous to both, from different valid points of view.
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