Torture tests: what do they mean?

[DavidM]

It appears that the original author of the "torture test" chose 355/226 due to its rough approximation of \(\pi\)/2. I wonder how much more interesting Pauli's table would be with \(\pi\)/2 as the target of the TAN function?

50g:

Code:


12-digit tan(1.57079632680) = -195948537906
15-digit tan(1.57079632679489) = 1.51074943811517E14

I'd be especially curious as to what the Casio results are for that.

This all seems very reminiscent of a recent post in the HP Prime section. While I'm not trying to re-hash the issues brought up in that discussion, I think it does point out the importance of understanding the implications of guard digits, precision, and how a given calculator displays full values vs. rounded representations of internal numbers.