Cycles and Circles in Roundoff Errors

Beschreibung

When a series of measurements is performed with increasingly coarse (or increasingly fine) precision, consecutive observations seem to be erratically distributed at first, and then organize themselves into cycles and patterns. The patterns, which arise because of roundoff errors, are related to a notion in number theory, the so- called Farey sequence. Key words: roundoff-error, number theory, Farey sequence.