[R] Problem with <= (less than or equal): not giving the expected result

[David Winsemius]

> On Apr 5, 2016, at 5:46 AM, Rainer Johannes <Johannes.Rainer at eurac.edu> wrote:
> 
> Thanks Adrian and Thierry (from the previous answer).
> 
> I was aware of the all.equal function, but there is nothing similar for <= (e.g. all.smallerEqual)?

Perhaps you will gain understanding by looking at this:

> abs(1 - 0.95) - 0.05
[1] 4.163336e-17

Perhaps you want to make your own `all.<=`

> '%all.<=%'   <- function (e1,e2){ e1 < e2 | abs(e1-e2) < .Machine$double.eps^0.5 }
> abs(1 - 0.95) %all.<=% 0.05
[1] TRUE


-- 
David.
> 
> cheers, jo
> 
> On 05 Apr 2016, at 14:31, Adrian Dușa <dusa.adrian at unibuc.ro<mailto:dusa.adrian at unibuc.ro>> wrote:
> 
> Yes, that does have to do with floating point representation.
> I use this function for these types of comparisons (works with values as well as with vectors):
> 
> check.equal <- function(x, y) {
>    check.vector <- as.logical(unlist(lapply(x, all.equal, y)))
>    check.vector[is.na<http://is.na/>(check.vector)] <- FALSE
>    return(check.vector)
> }
> 
> See:
> ?all.equal
> 
> Hth,
> Adrian
> 
> On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 2:34 PM, Rainer Johannes <Johannes.Rainer at eurac.edu<mailto:Johannes.Rainer at eurac.edu>> wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I have the following problem:
> 
> I have a function in which I check if the difference between values is smaller or equal to a certain threshold. I however realized that I might get there some unexpected results:
> 
>> abs(1 - 0.95) >= 0.05
> [1] TRUE
> ## So that’s fine, but:
>> abs(1 - 0.95) <= 0.05
> [1] FALSE
> 
> Apparently, abs(1 - 0.95) is not equal to 0.05, which I find however quite disturbing.
> 
> Along these lines:
>> abs(0.95 - 1) > 0.05
> [1] TRUE
>> abs(0.95 - 1) < 0.05
> [1] FALSE
> 
> I guess that has to do with the floating point representation of the data?
> 
> Is there something I miss or is there any solution to this?
> Thanks for any help!
> 
> cheers, jo
> 
> 
> 
> I tried this on different R-version (including 3.2.3 and 3.3.0 alpha); The R-version I used for the code above is:
> 
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25)
> Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)
> 
> locale:
> [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
> [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
> [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
> [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
> [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
> 
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org<mailto:R-help at r-project.org> mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html<http://www.r-project.org/posting-guide.html>
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Adrian Dusa
> University of Bucharest
> Romanian Social Data Archive
> Soseaua Panduri nr.90
> 050663 Bucharest sector 5
> Romania
> 
> 
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> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA