From owner-sc22wg5@dkuug.dk Fri Aug 15 21:17:03 2003 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by dkuug.dk (8.12.8p1/8.9.2) id h7FJH3YU080254 for sc22wg5-domo; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 21:17:03 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from owner-sc22wg5@dkuug.dk) X-Authentication-Warning: ptah.dkuug.dk: majordom set sender to owner-sc22wg5@dkuug.dk using -f Received: from mail1.cray.com (mail1.cray.com [136.162.0.111]) by dkuug.dk (8.12.8p1/8.9.2) with ESMTP id h7FJGvEc080248 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 21:16:58 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from longb@cray.com) Received: from relayb.mw.cray.com (relayb.us.cray.com [192.168.252.110]) by mail1.cray.com (8.12.9/8.12.9/gw-1.2) with ESMTP id h7FJGo4G012629; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 14:16:50 -0500 (CDT) Received: from saffron.us.cray.com (saffron.mw.cray.com [172.31.27.14]) by relayb.mw.cray.com (8.12.9/8.12.6/hub-1.2) with ESMTP id h7FJGnqH015454; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 14:16:49 -0500 (CDT) Received: from cray.com (mh-dhcp-172-31-20-206 [172.31.20.206]) by saffron.us.cray.com (8.8.8/Cray-server-1.6-nhsmod011017) with ESMTP id OAA2711508; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 14:16:49 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <3F3D3371.9060708@cray.com> Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 14:24:33 -0500 From: Bill Long Reply-To: longb@cray.com Organization: Cray Inc. User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: keith bierman CC: Robert Corbett , sc22wg5@dkuug.dk Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.2944) clarification of technical intent in N1553 References: <0HJM003FYWNQXJ@mpkmail.eng.sun.com> <200308151832.h7FIWhHU080019@dkuug.dk> <200308151850.h7FIoWJi080122@dkuug.dk> In-Reply-To: <200308151850.h7FIoWJi080122@dkuug.dk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Cray-VirusStatus: clean Sender: owner-sc22wg5@dkuug.dk Precedence: bulk keith bierman wrote: > >> One could argue that things that are not numbers do not have signs. > > > Infinity is not a number. Signed Infinities have significance and > great use in the IEEE model. Not all things which are "not numbers" > are NaNs ;> Actually, this is exactly backwards. Infinity is a perfectly well defined number (at least in the mathematics of complex variables), and it does not have a sign. Of course, other parts of the IEEE model are horribly wrong mathematically as well. I guess that's why it is the IEEE model and not the AMS model. Unfortunately a lot of our users do know mathematics, and are constantly irritated by the errors in the model. Cheers, Bill -- Bill Long longb@cray.com Fortran Technical Support & voice: 651-605-9024 Bioinformatics Software Development fax: 651-605-9142 Cray Inc., 1340 Mendota Heights Rd., Mendota Heights, MN, 55120