User Guide

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Floating-Point Computations
In some situations, a numeric approximation of an exact quantity is required.
For example, the plot command requires the expression it is plotting to
evaluate to numeric values that can be rendered on the screen: π cannot be
so rendered, but can be. Maple distinguishes approximate from
exact quantities by the presence or absence of a decimal point: 9 is ap-
proximate, while is exact.
Note: An alternative representation of floating-point numbers, called e-
notation, may not include an explicit decimal point: 1e5 , 3e-2
.
In the presence of a floating-point (approximate) quantity in an expression,
Maple generally computes using numeric approximations. Arithmetic in-
volving mixed exact and floating-point quantities results in a floating-point
result.
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68 • 3 Performing Computations