Greg Lovern wrote:

On Aug 27, 7:02 am, Jim Thomlinson <James_Thomlin...@owfg-Re-Move-
This-.com wrote:

Now that every one else has waded in I will ask the question... Why would you
need more than 15 digits of accuracy? With that many digits I can get the
distance from here to the sun to less than a millimeter. Just curious.



Hi Jim,


Also BTW, I'm curious -- how does 15 significant digits of precision
get you the distance from here to the sun to less than a millimeter?
Isn't the average distance approximately 149,600,000,000,000
millimeters, which would let you get to the *nearest* millimeter in 15
significant digits of precision (or within one millimeter, assuming
truncation rather than rounding), but not to a fraction of a
millimeter? Not that it really matters, of course.


Simple, since 15 significant digits of precision can give you the
distance to the sun to the nearest millimeter the error will be LESS
than one millimeter.