What the runs disagree by, and what the bound says they might
At its defaults it draws what the runs disagree by, and what the bound says they might. Over ten decades of summation condition number, on vectors of 2048 numbers: the measured spread between seven partitioned reductions of the same vector, the quantity κu, and the classical error bound γ₍ₙ₋₁₎Σ|xᵢ| relative to the sum. The measured spread and κu are one curve times a constant — the ratio runs from 0.253 to 0.258 across the whole sweep, a spread of 1.021 while both quantities move by ten orders. The bound sits 7932 to 8100 above the disagreement and is identical for every ordering, which is what makes it useless for the question a reader actually has: not how wrong is this, but will the next run say the same.
spread-and-bound is one function in lib/figures/repro.js —
one sum, several answers — what a reduction's division costs, and the two policies that remove it. Everything below came out of it during this build, at
arguments taken from the essays rather than invented for this page. A figure here is the
figure a reader meets in an essay, and if the generator changes, this page changes with it.
At its defaults
Drawn even though every essay passes arguments — which on this site is every essay, at 100% of placements since the standard pass. A default nothing exercises is a trap for the next essay to call this with none, and this is the page where a default that has drifted from the figures around it becomes visible.
Over ten decades of summation condition number, on vectors of 2048 numbers: the measured spread between seven partitioned reductions of the same vector, the quantity κu, and the classical error bound γ₍ₙ₋₁₎Σ|xᵢ| relative to the sum. The measured spread and κu are one curve times a constant — the ratio runs from 0.253 to 0.258 across the whole sweep, a spread of 1.021 while both quantities move by ten orders. The bound sits 7932 to 8100 above the disagreement and is identical for every ordering, which is what makes it useless for the question a reader actually has: not how wrong is this, but will the next run say the same.
n: 2048
The arguments are the ones A bound every answer satisfies passes. A value nobody placed would be a picture no essay asked for and no claim was ever checked against.
Over ten decades of summation condition number, on vectors of 2048 numbers: the measured spread between seven partitioned reductions of the same vector, the quantity κu, and the classical error bound γ₍ₙ₋₁₎Σ|xᵢ| relative to the sum. The measured spread and κu are one curve times a constant — the ratio runs from 0.253 to 0.258 across the whole sweep, a spread of 1.021 while both quantities move by ten orders. The bound sits 7932 to 8100 above the disagreement and is identical for every ordering, which is what makes it useless for the question a reader actually has: not how wrong is this, but will the next run say the same.
n: 256
The arguments are the ones A bound every answer satisfies passes. A value nobody placed would be a picture no essay asked for and no claim was ever checked against.
Over ten decades of summation condition number, on vectors of 256 numbers: the measured spread between seven partitioned reductions of the same vector, the quantity κu, and the classical error bound γ₍ₙ₋₁₎Σ|xᵢ| relative to the sum. The measured spread and κu are one curve times a constant — the ratio runs from 0.090 to 0.127 across the whole sweep, a spread of 1.414 while both quantities move by ten orders. The bound sits 2008 to 2839 above the disagreement and is identical for every ordering, which is what makes it useless for the question a reader actually has: not how wrong is this, but will the next run say the same.
n: 1024
The arguments are the ones A bound every answer satisfies passes. A value nobody placed would be a picture no essay asked for and no claim was ever checked against.
Over ten decades of summation condition number, on vectors of 1024 numbers: the measured spread between seven partitioned reductions of the same vector, the quantity κu, and the classical error bound γ₍ₙ₋₁₎Σ|xᵢ| relative to the sum. The measured spread and κu are one curve times a constant — the ratio runs from 0.167 to 0.188 across the whole sweep, a spread of 1.125 while both quantities move by ten orders. The bound sits 5446 to 6127 above the disagreement and is identical for every ordering, which is what makes it useless for the question a reader actually has: not how wrong is this, but will the next run say the same.
n: 4096
The arguments are the ones A bound every answer satisfies passes. A value nobody placed would be a picture no essay asked for and no claim was ever checked against.
Over ten decades of summation condition number, on vectors of 4096 numbers: the measured spread between seven partitioned reductions of the same vector, the quantity κu, and the classical error bound γ₍ₙ₋₁₎Σ|xᵢ| relative to the sum. The measured spread and κu are one curve times a constant — the ratio runs from 0.117 to 0.136 across the whole sweep, a spread of 1.165 while both quantities move by ten orders. The bound sits 3·10⁴ to 3.5·10⁴ above the disagreement and is identical for every ordering, which is what makes it useless for the question a reader actually has: not how wrong is this, but will the next run say the same.
n: 8192
The arguments are the ones A bound every answer satisfies passes. A value nobody placed would be a picture no essay asked for and no claim was ever checked against.
Over ten decades of summation condition number, on vectors of 8192 numbers: the measured spread between seven partitioned reductions of the same vector, the quantity κu, and the classical error bound γ₍ₙ₋₁₎Σ|xᵢ| relative to the sum. The measured spread and κu are one curve times a constant — the ratio runs from 0.049 to 0.056 across the whole sweep, a spread of 1.155 while both quantities move by ten orders. The bound sits 1.5·10⁵ to 1.7·10⁵ above the disagreement and is identical for every ordering, which is what makes it useless for the question a reader actually has: not how wrong is this, but will the next run say the same.
What it checked while drawing
Every figure above checked its own claims on the way to being drawn, and a claim that failed
would have stopped the picture rather than shipped a wrong one. Those checks used to leave
no trace at all: a passing one returned true and the only evidence the figure had
checked anything was that nothing crashed. The list below is what they actually said, collected
by running this generator with an observer installed — not a description of
what it is believed to check.
4 distinct claims across 6 sets of arguments, grouped below by shape — because most of them are one sentence with a different number in it, and how many separate times that sentence was put to the test is the informative part.
a vector long enough to divide
a vector the sweep can afford to sum sixty times
and the published bound is orders looser at every κ
the disagreement is κu times one constant of the vector, across ten decades
Against the rule
The rule does not apply to it. It factorises nothing, so there is no residual it could be withholding. That is worth stating rather than leaving blank: a site that reported the rule as satisfied by every generator would be counting mostly generators the rule never reached.
Across the library: the rule bites on 217
of 397 generators —
199 print a residual and
18 are exempt with a published reason;
180 factorise nothing.
Read from lib/residual-rule.js, which is the same body the gate enforces from,
and the gate's last check fails the build if this page and it disagree about any generator.
Where it is called
Changing this generator changes every figure on this list. That is what makes the list worth publishing rather than keeping in a check script.
A bound every answer satisfies
The classical bound on a summation error is correct, it covers all twenty-six answers one vector produced, and it is 7,932 times larger than the difference between them. A statement true of every ordering cannot say which ordering you got.
The answer that depends on the machineThe same program, twice
One vector of 4,096 numbers, one summation algorithm, one precision, twenty-six runs — and twenty-one different answers. Nothing in the program chose between them, every one of them satisfies the textbook bound, and the exactly rounded answer is not among them.