> #- > #- > DEFAULT_MAX_EXPONENT = 999999999 > #- > #- > DEFAULT_MIN_EXPONENT = -999999999 > #- > #- > ABSOLUTE_MAX_EXP = 999999999 > #- > #- > ABSOLUTE_MIN_EXP = -999999999 > #- > #- I can think of at least one real use for exponents outside > #- this range: > #- probabilities. E.g., if I'm using probabilistic models to estimate > > So you need a number smaller than 10**(-999999999)? Not often. And of course, "need" might be a bit strong, since I can use other tricks (logs & renormalization) to avoid underflow. But yes, I can imagine cases where I would get underflow using naive algorithms. E.g., if I'm looking at probabilities for 1 billion words of text (computational linguists are starting to use corpora of this size), and for some reason I want to do language modelling on it, I could end up with numbers on the order of (1e-20)**(1,000,000,000). I.e., 10**(-20,000,000,000). On the other hand, I can't think of a use, off hand, of calculating the probability of a billion word string of text. But I just wanted to point out that there may be cases where extremely large/small numbers can be useful; and as computers get more powerful and space gets cheaper, the numbers people use will tend to grow in size. I understand the argument that this *may* help catch errors, but I just don't think it *will* catch many errors. How many people would have errors that would have been caught if long had an absolute min/max? -Edward
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