Insights Rating: Is Precision Necessary?

[DrClaude]

I don't think that so many significant digits are needed

 

[berkeman]

Plus, the math looks wrong...

 

[Drakkith]

Precision is important...

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I changed the number of significant digits displayed in floating point numbers from 14 to 17. Might be what caused this issue. I'll revert back to 14.

 

[mfb]

Change it to 3 or 2? There is no point in having more.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Change it to 3 or 2? There is no point in having more.

Default is 14, so there must be some reason the PHP devs think it's a good value.

 

[berkeman]

Default is 14, so there must be some reason the PHP devs think it's a good value.

I'm guessing that their Focus Group didn't have any scientists or engineers...

 

[robphy]

http://php.net/manual/en/function.round.php

from http://php.net/manual/en/function.printf.php

You can use this function to format the decimal places in a number: 

$num = 2.12; 
printf("%.1f",$num); 

prints: 

2.1

 

[mfb]

Default is 14, so there must be some reason the PHP devs think it's a good value.

Well, if it is a general PHP setting: PHP has no idea how precise these numbers are supposed to be. 14 is small enough to avoid displaying rounding errors in most cases, and large enough to keep more digits than anyone is reasonably interested in (with extremely few exceptions).