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Re: [srfi-70] Limit

This page is part of the web mail archives of SRFI 70 from before July 7th, 2015. The new archives for SRFI 70 contain all messages, not just those from before July 7th, 2015.




On Wed, 25 May 2005, Sebastian Egner wrote:

> Unfortunately, my experience is that this approach is highly
> unreliable.  In the end, I spent more time doing analytical sanity
> checks myself than it took to write the proper numerical code
> directly after understanding the limits properly.

>Example: An important function from information theory is
>
>        f(x) =  -x log(x).

> This function is in principle well behaved (smooth, analytic, etc.)
> on (0,1], but its derivative does not exist at x = 0. Moreover, f(0)
> cannot directly be computed numerically because the underflow from
> log(x) is not cancelled by the multiplication with zero. Practical
> numerical code: IF x < xmin THEN 0 ELSE x log(x), where xmin is
> chosen minimal such that log(xmin) is an ordinary number and not
> -infinity.

This is difficult;  In many ways, the idea of "infinity" as a number
too large to represent requires a corresponding idea of "epsilon" as
a number too small to represent.  (This is an idea subtly different
from "signed zeros": epsilon is 1/inf, a "smallest positive number".
This saves you in some situations from mathematical errors, but the
properties of such a simple idea of epsilon are not helpful in all
cases.  Where log(0) is undefined, log(epsilon) = -infinity.  Better
as far as it goes, but it still leaves you with a mathematically
undefined situation, so you have to write the sanity check anyway.


				Bear