HP Forum Archive 16

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Standard Tests for Calculator Accuracy? Message #1 Posted by Steve S on 22 Apr 2006, 8:29 p.m. Does anyone here know if there is a standard or protocol for assessing the accuracy of calculating devices? What I'm thinking of is a series of problems, for each of the functions that one would typically find on a technical calculator, that could be used to assess the acuracy of the function's algorithm (or at least it's implementation). If such a standard or protocol exists, where would I look for it? Thanks in advance for any information...

Re: Standard Tests for Calculator Accuracy? Message #2 Posted by db (martinez, california) on 22 Apr 2006, 9:55 p.m., in response to message #1 by Steve S The only standard one i know of is Mike Sebastian's "calculator forensics project". It is limited to what was his begining interest, trig accuracy. A couple of people here have pointed out (perhaps rightly) it's flaws, but have not done the work to design an improvement or implement a data base for a better one so.....

Re: Standard Tests for Calculator Accuracy? Message #3 Posted by Gerson W. Barbosa on 23 Apr 2006, 12:26 p.m., in response to message #2 by db (martinez, california) There are also Hugh Steers's torture tests.

Re: Standard Tests for Calculator Accuracy? Message #4 Posted by db (martinez, ca.) on 23 Apr 2006, 1:16 p.m., in response to message #3 by Gerson W. Barbosa Interesting site Gerson, i liked "The Secret Life of the MOD Function" too. I must admit to clicking on the link with a bit or trepidation though. With that name i was expecting long falls onto concrete and big hammers.

Re: Standard Tests for Calculator Accuracy? Message #5 Posted by Steve S on 23 Apr 2006, 3:37 p.m., in response to message #4 by db (martinez, ca.) Gerson & dB - Thanks for your responses. I already know about both of the webpages that you point to. What I was hoping to find was a more formal set of tests, for example something from NIST or the IEEE. Does anyone know of such a thing?

Re: Standard Tests for Calculator Accuracy? Message #6 Posted by John Limpert on 23 Apr 2006, 4:08 p.m., in response to message #1 by Steve S You might find this of interest: http://www.netlib.org/paranoia/

Re: Standard Tests for Calculator Accuracy? Message #7 Posted by Steve S on 23 Apr 2006, 6:23 p.m., in response to message #6 by John Limpert John - Thanks for your comment. Because the tests on this webpage appear to be in C and Fortran, I'm not sure that they would be of much use for a calculator. The underlying algorithm, however, might be worthwhile if I can I can decode it. If nothing else turns up, I may try that. Thanks again for this reference...!

Re: Standard Tests for Calculator Accuracy? Message #8 Posted by Mike (Stgt) on 24 Apr 2006, 4:36 a.m., in response to message #1 by Steve S See 20.1 Diagnosing Machine Parameters in Numerical Recipes. You only have to migrate that FORTRAN to your calculator (but you know, a good FORTRAN porgammer may do FORTRAN in any language). Ciao.....Mike

Re: Standard Tests for Calculator Accuracy? Message #9 Posted by Steve S on 24 Apr 2006, 9:00 a.m., in response to message #8 by Mike (Stgt) Mike - I'll take a look at that section. Thanks for the reference. I've also been looking through the IEEE website; lots of hits, but I haven't yet stumbled onto quite the right set of keywords...

Re: Standard Tests for Calculator Accuracy? Message #10 Posted by John Smitherman on 24 Apr 2006, 10:56 p.m., in response to message #1 by Steve S Here is a link to NIST's software page which contains data sets which can be used for calibrating algorithms for statistics and sparsely populated matrices: http://math.nist.gov/ This may help but is only part of what I think you are looking for. Regards, John

Re: Standard Tests for Calculator Accuracy? Message #11 Posted by Steve S on 25 Apr 2006, 8:29 a.m., in response to message #10 by John Smitherman John - Thanks! I'll take a look at this. Still haven't found much at the IEEE website...

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