COMPSCI 1JC3 Midterm: Midterm #2 Study Notes
20 Nov 2014
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Binary numbers with a binary exponent and a sign. 3 special values: infinity, -infinity, nan (not a number error) I. e. just one nan anywhere in a calculation causes the whole computation to return a nan. If there is an error anywhere, it bubbles up through the calculation. In a big list, we can have some undefined/error cases, and still apply the same computation to each element in the list. This lets things go fast (especially in gpus) This is unnecessary and will create ambiguity in the algorithm. Definitions: turing-complete, a computer language is said to be turing-complete if that computer language can be used to write any program (implement any algorithm), this is known as arbitrary computation. Parts of a computer language: syntax, grammar (natural and cs, semantics, meaning, we need unambiguous semantics in computer languages - to prevent cases where an operation in a program could be interpreted in more than 1 way.
