1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179
|
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
<!--Converted with LaTeX2HTML 98.2 beta6 (August 14th, 1998)
original version by: Nikos Drakos, CBLU, University of Leeds
* revised and updated by: Marcus Hennecke, Ross Moore, Herb Swan
* with significant contributions from:
Jens Lippmann, Marek Rouchal, Martin Wilck and others -->
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Sources of Error in Numerical Calculations</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Sources of Error in Numerical Calculations">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="lug_l2h">
<META NAME="resource-type" CONTENT="document">
<META NAME="distribution" CONTENT="global">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<LINK REL="STYLESHEET" HREF="lug_l2h.css">
<LINK REL="next" HREF="node75.html">
<LINK REL="previous" HREF="node72.html">
<LINK REL="up" HREF="node72.html">
<LINK REL="next" HREF="node74.html">
</HEAD>
<BODY >
<!--Navigation Panel-->
<A NAME="tex2html5217"
HREF="node74.html">
<IMG WIDTH="37" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="next"
SRC="next_motif.png"></A>
<A NAME="tex2html5211"
HREF="node72.html">
<IMG WIDTH="26" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="up"
SRC="up_motif.png"></A>
<A NAME="tex2html5205"
HREF="node72.html">
<IMG WIDTH="63" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="previous"
SRC="previous_motif.png"></A>
<A NAME="tex2html5213"
HREF="node1.html">
<IMG WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="contents"
SRC="contents_motif.png"></A>
<A NAME="tex2html5215"
HREF="node152.html">
<IMG WIDTH="43" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="index"
SRC="index_motif.png"></A>
<BR>
<B> Next:</B> <A NAME="tex2html5218"
HREF="node74.html">Further Details: Floating Point</A>
<B> Up:</B> <A NAME="tex2html5212"
HREF="node72.html">Accuracy and Stability</A>
<B> Previous:</B> <A NAME="tex2html5206"
HREF="node72.html">Accuracy and Stability</A>
  <B> <A NAME="tex2html5214"
HREF="node1.html">Contents</A></B>
  <B> <A NAME="tex2html5216"
HREF="node152.html">Index</A></B>
<BR>
<BR>
<!--End of Navigation Panel-->
<H1><A NAME="SECTION03410000000000000000"></A><A NAME="secroundoff"></A>
<BR>
Sources of Error in Numerical Calculations
</H1>
<P>
<A NAME="9705"></A>
<A NAME="9706"></A>
<A NAME="9707"></A>
<A NAME="9708"></A>
<A NAME="9709"></A>
There are two sources of error whose effects can be measured by the bounds in
this chapter: <EM>roundoff error</EM> and <EM>input error</EM>. Roundoff error
arises from rounding results of floating-point operations during
the algorithm.
Input error is error in the input to the algorithm from prior calculations or
measurements. We describe roundoff error first, and then input error.
<P>
Almost all the error bounds LAPACK provides are multiples of
<EM>machine epsilon</EM>,<A NAME="9713"></A><A NAME="9714"></A><A NAME="9715"></A>
which we abbreviate
by <IMG
WIDTH="12" HEIGHT="16" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0"
SRC="img262.png"
ALT="$\epsilon$">.
Machine epsilon bounds the roundoff in individual
floating-point operations.
It may be loosely defined as the largest relative error
<A NAME="9716"></A><A NAME="9717"></A>
in any floating-point operation that neither overflows nor underflows.
(Overflow means the result is too
large to represent accurately, and underflow means the result is too
small to represent accurately.) Machine epsilon is available either by
the function call
<A NAME="9718"></A><A NAME="9719"></A>SLAMCH('Epsilon') (or simply SLAMCH('E')) in single precision, or
by the function call DLAMCH('Epsilon') (or DLAMCH('E')) in double precision.
See section <A HREF="node74.html#secbackgroundfloatingpoint">4.1.1</A> and
Table <A HREF="node74.html#tabIEEEvalues">4.1</A> for a discussion of common values of machine
epsilon.
<A NAME="9722"></A><A NAME="9723"></A>
<A NAME="9724"></A><A NAME="9725"></A>
<P>
Since underflow is almost always less significant than roundoff,
we will not consider it further.
Overflow usually means the computation is invalid, but there
are some LAPACK routines that routinely generate and handle overflows
using the rules of IEEE arithmetic
(see section <A HREF="node74.html#secbackgroundfloatingpoint">4.1.1</A>).
<P>
Bounds on <EM>input errors</EM>, or errors in the input parameters inherited
from prior computations or measurements, may be easily incorporated
into most LAPACK error bounds.
Suppose the input data is accurate to, say, 5 decimal digits
(we discuss exactly what
this means in section <A HREF="node75.html#secnormnotation">4.2</A>). Then one simply replaces
<IMG
WIDTH="12" HEIGHT="16" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0"
SRC="img262.png"
ALT="$\epsilon$">
by
<!-- MATH
$\max(\epsilon, 10^{-5})$
-->
<IMG
WIDTH="101" HEIGHT="37" ALIGN="MIDDLE" BORDER="0"
SRC="img263.png"
ALT="$\max(\epsilon, 10^{-5})$">
in the error bounds.
<P>
<BR><HR>
<!--Table of Child-Links-->
<A NAME="CHILD_LINKS"></A>
<UL>
<LI><A NAME="tex2html5219"
HREF="node74.html">Further Details: Floating Point Arithmetic</A>
</UL>
<!--End of Table of Child-Links-->
<HR>
<!--Navigation Panel-->
<A NAME="tex2html5217"
HREF="node74.html">
<IMG WIDTH="37" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="next"
SRC="next_motif.png"></A>
<A NAME="tex2html5211"
HREF="node72.html">
<IMG WIDTH="26" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="up"
SRC="up_motif.png"></A>
<A NAME="tex2html5205"
HREF="node72.html">
<IMG WIDTH="63" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="previous"
SRC="previous_motif.png"></A>
<A NAME="tex2html5213"
HREF="node1.html">
<IMG WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="contents"
SRC="contents_motif.png"></A>
<A NAME="tex2html5215"
HREF="node152.html">
<IMG WIDTH="43" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="index"
SRC="index_motif.png"></A>
<BR>
<B> Next:</B> <A NAME="tex2html5218"
HREF="node74.html">Further Details: Floating Point</A>
<B> Up:</B> <A NAME="tex2html5212"
HREF="node72.html">Accuracy and Stability</A>
<B> Previous:</B> <A NAME="tex2html5206"
HREF="node72.html">Accuracy and Stability</A>
  <B> <A NAME="tex2html5214"
HREF="node1.html">Contents</A></B>
  <B> <A NAME="tex2html5216"
HREF="node152.html">Index</A></B>
<!--End of Navigation Panel-->
<ADDRESS>
<I>Susan Blackford</I>
<BR><I>1999-10-01</I>
</ADDRESS>
</BODY>
</HTML>
|