Computer Math

Ariane 5 rocket launch explosion
Amazing Info TV

Yesterday at lunch I heard a somewhat bizarre story about how an error in a math calculation caused an industrial disaster. While there have been incidents where a computer error resulted in a disaster (the Ariane space rocket (above) being one) I haven't found any confirmation of this particular story. But while I was looking I did find a couple of curious items.

Both of these items are relatively ancient, one is from 2006 and the other is from 2015. Both contained short programs that demonstrated their problems, so I tried them out on my machine and the same problem appeared. Well, looky there, magic!

I'm only posting this as a waypoint marker. We'll see if I get any farther down this road.

My test program for 2006 problem on github.

My test program for 2015 problem on github.