xkcd #217: e to the pi Minus pi (31 Jan 2007)

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/8653164

• xkcd / 217
• Explain xkcd / 217

Transcript:

Cueball: Hey, check it out: e^π^−π is 19.999099979. That's weird.
Black Hat: Yeah. That's how I got kicked out of the ACM in college.
Cueball: ...what?

Black Hat: During a competition, I told the programmers on our team that e^π^−π was a standard test of floating-point handlers -- it would come out to 20 unless they had rounding errors.

Cueball: That's awful.
Black Hat: Yeah, they dug through half their algorithms looking for the bug before they figured it out.

Hover text:

Also, I hear the 4th root of (9^2^ + 19^2^/22) is pi.