“Three-decimal-digits” means a numerical value that is precise to three places AFTER the decimal point or the total number of digits in a numerical value is 3?
For example 1.234 is Three-decimal-digits or not? Thanks!
I believe not. Please read the examples on page 16 & 17 in “Computer Arithmetic and errors”. You need to normalise the mantissa first for the 1.234.
Correct answer. You can only keep 3 decimal digits total
(before and after the dot).
The formal way is to normalize the mantissa first,
then round, but even if you do not normalize first,
as long as you always keep the three significant digits
(in all operations), that’s fine.