Quote of the Day

    This idea is basic to doing any kind of fancy math with a computer, but it seldom gets mentioned. Being as the paper was written by a couple of guys involved in molecular biology, I suspect that the M after the numbers in the last sentence refer to Moles, as in the molecular concentration of a particular substance in a fluid. fM would be femtoMoles. 10 to the minus 14th power written in decimal form is .000000000000001

• 1 milli-whatever is written as .001
• 1 micro .000001
• 1 nano  .000000001
• 1 pico  .000000000001
• 1 femto .000000000000001

    Whenever you are making calculations, you want to use numbers as close to one as you can because inevitably you are going to encounter a multiply or divide by a zillion and if you started with a very big or very small number your result will be off the scale and your answer will be worthless.

    Just for reference, a double precision number in today's common floating point format can have at most 16 significant digits,