Two to the one twelth power

[John Delacour]

At 6:02 pm -0500 30/9/06, Bruce D. Rempe wrote:

>When I ask excel to take it to 30 places after the decimal.  I get
>1.059463094359300000000000000000
>
>So, it seem to end at the 3.  If you take this to the 12th power, you get
>exactly 2 (at least excel does).

Not if you format the cell to give the result to 14 decimal places. 
You would then get 2.00000000000011.  I have already shown that 
1.05946309435929526, with 17 decimal places, is not the exact figure, 
but Excel will not deal with such precision.

I have also said that it is quite pointless to exceed a certain 
degree of precision.  The question whether the 12th root of 2 is a 
rational number is of no importance to anybody except a student of 
arithmetic.

JD