Re: dumb DrScheme rational # question

[Richard Cobbe <cobbe@airmail.net>]

Lo, on Tuesday, January 29, Matthias Felleisen did write:

> 
> The key is to teach the trade-off. Including the computational trade-off. 

Oh, indeed.  In hindsight, my statement wasn't perhaps the clearest---we
simply showed them how to use exact->inexact to translate the final
answer into a form that was easier to understand, rather than forcing
all of the numeric computations to use FP math (as Robby had suggested).

Regrettably, I don't entirely remember the context in which this came
up, so I can't say whether or not we addressed the tradeoffs between
rational and FP math.  I suspect not; I recall being somewhat surprised
at the 60-odd digit rational result from a particular exercise, so I
just threw exact->inexact up on the board.

Ah, well; something to do better next time.

Richard