Question

I’m calculating pi using a long winded formula. I’m trying to get more familiar with floating point numbers etc. I have a working program that uses doubles. The problem with my code is:

1. If I use a double, pi is only accurate to the 7th decimal place. I can’t get it to be any more accurate.
2. If I use a long double, pi is accurate up to the 9th decimal place however the code takes much longer to run. If I check for precision for less than 0.00000001 using a long double, pi returns a value of 9.4246775. I assume that this is due to the long double.

My question is what is the most accurate variable type? How could I change my code to improve the precision of pi?

Here is my code:

#include <iomanip>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <iostream>
#include <cmath>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
 double arctan;
 double pi;
 double precision;
 double previous=0;
 int y=3;
 int loopcount=0;

   cout<<"Start\n";

   arctan=1-(pow(1,y)/y);

 do
   {
     y=y+2;
     arctan=arctan+(pow(1,y)/y);
     y=y+2;
     arctan=arctan-(pow(1,y)/y);

      pi=4*(arctan);

    //  cout<<"Pi is: ";
    //  cout<<setprecision(12)<<pi<<endl;

      precision=(pi*(pow(10,10)/10));

      loopcount++;

      if(precision-previous<0.000000001)
        break;

      previous=precision;
    }
  while(true);

  cout<<"Pi is:"<<endl;
       cout<<setprecision(11)<<pi<<endl;
  cout<<"Times looped:"<<endl;
       cout<<loopcount<<endl;

return 0;
}

Answer 1

You can get the max limits of doubles/long doubles from std::numeric_limits

#include <iostream>
#include <limits>

int main()
{
    std::cout << "     Double::digits10:  " << std::numeric_limits<double>::digits10 << "\n";
    std::cout << "Long Double::digits10:  " << std::numeric_limits<long double>::digits10 << "\n";
}

On my machine this gives:

     Double::digits10:  15
Long Double::digits10:  18

So I expect long double to be accurate to 18 digits.
The definition of this term can be found here:

http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/std/limits/numeric_limits/

Standard quote: 18.3.2 Numeric limits [limits]

Also Note: As the comment is way down in the above list:

That @sarnold is incorrect (though mysteriously he has two silly people up-voting his comment without checking) in his assertions on pow(). What he states is only applicable to C. C++ has overloads for the types because in C++ pow() is a template function. See: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/cmath/pow/ in the standard at 26.4.7 complex value operations [complex.value.ops]