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valicordtoday at 2:48 PM1 replyview on HN

Wait this doesn't make sense. Yes you'd get smaller absolute error in radians, but it doesn't really help because it's different units. Relative error is the same in degrees and radians, that's the whole point of exponential representation. All you're doing is adding a fixed offset to the exponent, but it doesn't give you any more precision when converting to radians


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adrian_btoday at 3:04 PM

Having a constant relative error is indeed the reason for using floating-point numbers.

However, for angles the relative error is completely irrelevant. For angles only the absolute error matters.

For angles the optimum representation is as fixed-point numbers, not as floating-point numbers.

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