Why in the bisection method it is better to compute the midpoint c between a and b with
c = a + (b - a) / 2.
instead of the simpler:
c = (a + b) / 2.
all variables are floating points.
+2
A:
it is to avoid any potential overflows / loss of precision in intermediate calculations.
tenfour
2010-10-31 17:08:45
Overflow shouldn't be a problem with floating point types. Loss of precision might be.
Henk Holterman
2010-10-31 17:15:46
thanks - updated
tenfour
2010-10-31 17:19:47
+1
A:
There is an interesting (old) blog post about this type of issue on Joshua Bloch's blog:
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/06/extra-extra-read-all-about-it-nearly.html
corriganjc
2010-10-31 17:15:14
So they do. I missed that. Thanks for pointing it out. In the floating point case your comment is the most useful.
corriganjc
2010-10-31 18:26:38