Hi,
I use MATLab to calculate an energy value up to a specific decimal place. However, I have noticed it can only do so up to its 54th decimal place. After that, when adding values (decimals) of the 55th power (numbers like 7.000000000000001e-55), no change is stored.
I have two questions;
- Is there something one can do to increase the decimal accuracy? I have read several related topics, and I'm afraid this is not, but it's worth a shot. I thought about storing the decimals places in an array, but MATLab also needs to calculate with this value, which an array would prevent (you'd have to put them in a value again, which would have that problem).
- How can I detect the maximum amount of decimal places that the computer can go with? My computer apparently handles 54, but I intend to share my code, and I'd like to give a warning if a user requests more decimal places than their computer will show (assuming this 54-value is different per computer). I read something about the use of eps(E), but I don't quite understand this or how to convert this to the number 54 (now it shows 5.551115123125783e-17)
Kind regards,
Isaiah van Hunen
P.S. I have no problem with rounded of values in my display, I use num2str(E,decimals) to ensure that it is shown to its maximum amount of decimal places.
