Hi,
I'm at a loss to explain an issue I'm seeing below. It's a simple enough peice of C++, just sum all the values of 1/n from n=1 to n=10000. Easy, eh? The problem I have is explaining why when looping for the large to small bound i.e. 10000 down to 1 do I *always* get a slightly larger result than if I loop from 1 to 10000?
My gut instinct and some further testing tells me this is a rounding problem - for example if I use 'long double' then no rounding error is seen in the first 20dp, but given the same range in both loops, I can't explain why the decrementing loop comes out larger for any large-ish n?
I'd be eternally grateful if someone could explain this in detail or point me to a good link?
Cheers,
Phil.
Program output - GCC 4.0.1:
Small to large: 10.78760603604437307
Large to small: 10.787606036044381952
#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
double result=1.;
std::cout << std::setprecision(20) << "\n:";
for(double i=1.; i<=10000.; ++i)
{
//std::cout << "\n" << i;
result += 1./i;
}
std::cout << "\n\nSmall to large: " << result;
result = 1.;
for(double i=10000.; i>=1.; --i)
{
//std::cout << "\n" << i;
result += 1./i;
}
std::cout << "\nLarge to small: " << result << "\n\n";
return 0;
}
