Approximations and Round-Off Errors

Chapter 3

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• Numerical methods yield approximate results that are close to the exact analytical
solution.
• How confident we are in our approximate result ? In other words,
“how much error is present in our calculation and is it tolerable?”

Significant Figures
• Number of significant figures indicates precision. Significant digits of a number
are those that can be used with confidence, e.g., the number of certain digits plus
one estimated digit.

53,800 How many significant figures?

5.38 x 104 3
5.3800 x 104 5

Zeros are sometimes used to locate the decimal point not significant figures.
0.00001753 4
0.001753 4
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 Identifying Significant Digits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures

•All non-zero digits are considered significant. For example, 91 has two significant
figures, while 123.45 has five significant figures

•Zeros appearing anywhere between two non-zero digits are significant.

Ex: 101.1002 has seven significant figures.

•Leading zeros are not significant. Ex: 0.00052 has two significant figures.

•Trailing zeros in a number containing a decimal point are significant.

Ex: 12.2300 has six significant figures: 1, 2, 2, 3, 0 and 0. The number
0.000122300 still has only six significant figures (the zeros before the 1 are not
significant). In addition, 120.00 has five significant figures.

•The significance of trailing zeros in a number not containing a decimal point

can be ambiguous. For example, it may not always be clear if a number like 1300 is
accurate to the nearest unit. Various conventions exist to address this issue.

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 Error Definitions

True error: Et = True value – Approximation (+/-)

True value – Approximation

True percent relative error :  t  100%
True value

Approximate Error
• For numerical methods, the true value will be known only when we deal
with functions that can be solved analytically.
• In real world applications, we usually do not know the answer a priori.

Approximate Error = CurrentApproximation(i) – PreviousApproximation(i-1)

Approximate error
Approximate Relative Error : a  100%
Approximation

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 Iterative approaches

(Current Approx.) - (Previous Approx.)

Approx.Relative Error : a  100%
CurrentApprox.

Computations are repeated until stopping criterion is satisfied

a  s Pre-specified % tolerance based on your

knowledge of the solution. (Use absolute value)

If εs is chosen as:
 s  (0.5  10(2-n) )%
Then the result is correct to at least n significant figures (Scarborough 1966)

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EXAMPLE 3.2: Maclaurin series expansion
2 3 n
x x x
e x  1 x    ... 
2 3! n!
Calculate e0.5 (= 1.648721…) up to 3 significant figures. During the calculation
process, compute the true and approximate percent relative errors at each step

Error tolerance  s  (0.5 10(2-3) )%  0.05%

MATLAB file in: C:\ERCAL\228\MATLAB\3\EXPTaylor.m
Terms Count Result εt (%) True εa (%) Approx.
1 1 1 39.3
1+(0.5) 2 1.5 9.02 33.3
1+(.5)+(.5)2/2 3 1.625 1.44 7.69
1+(.5)+(.5)2/2+(.5)3/6 4 1.6458333 0.175 1.27
5 1.6484375 0.0172 0.158
6 1.648697917 0.00142 0.0158
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 Round-off and Chopping Errors

• Numbers such as , e, or √7 cannot be expressed by a fixed number of

significant figures. Therefore, they can not be represented exactly by a
computer which has a fixed word-length

 = 3.1415926535….
• Discrepancy introduced by this omission of significant figures is called round-
off or chopping errors.

• If  is to be stored on a base-10 system carrying 7 significant digits,

chopping : =3.141592 error: t=0.00000065
round-off: =3.141593error: t=0.00000035

• Some machines use chopping, because rounding has additional computational

overhead.
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Number
Representation

86409
in Base-10

173
in Base-2

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The representation of -173 on a 16-bit computer
using the signed magnitude method

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Computer representation of a floating-point number

exponent

m.be
mantissa
Base of the number system used

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156.78  0.15678x103
(in a floating point base-10
system)
1
 0.029411765
34 Suppose only 4
decimal places
0 to be stored
0.029410

• Normalize  remove the leading zeroes.

• Multiply the mantissa by 10 and lower the exponent by 1
0.2941 x 10-1 Additional significant
figure is retained

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• Due to Normalization, absolute value of m is limited: 1
 m 1
b
for base-10 system: 0.1 ≤ m < 1
for base-2 system: 0.5 ≤ m < 1

• Floating point representation allows both fractions and very large

numbers to be expressed on the computer. However,
– Floating point numbers take up more room
– Take longer to process than integer numbers.

Q: What is the smallest positive floating

point number that can be represented using
a 7-bit word (3-bits reserved for mantissa).

What is the number?

(* Solve Example 3.4 page 61 *)

Another Exercise: What is the largest positive floating point number that can be
represented using a 7-bit word (3-bits reserved for mantissa).
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