"Paul A Bristow" <pbristow@hetp.u-net.com> wrote in message news:E1CRF0A-00014Y-00@he201war.uk.vianw.net... | | But I believe strongly that "at most a few ulps" is entirely the wrong | objective. | When the existing Standards make ABSOLUTELY NO accuracy requirements, | I find this a surprising target. | | If Quality is Fitness-for-Purpose, | then a much lower accuracy is entirely acceptable in the Real World. I agree with this. Probabilities are often accompanied by a significant second order uncertainty. For example, it many real applications it is hard to justify a probability with a precision like 10.3%. | The loss of even 3 decimal digits precision in the incomplete beta | still make a negligible difference to the probability calculated | (which has a much greater uncertainty because of the sensitivity | to physical measurement and degrees of freedom). not to say when probabilities are expert jugdments based on a sample size of 50. I'm with you here Paul. -Thorsten