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A comment on Facebook invented a new time unit called the ‘flick’ and it’s truly amazing. Parent comment

Re:Facebook invented a new time unit called the ‘flick’ and ... by throwaway080383 on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @09:04PM (#16219751)
I think the problem is that the numerator and denominator in reduced form can easily get pretty big, even if the magnitude of the number itself isn't all that big. E.g. in the rational number

1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + ... + 1/24,

the denominator already can't fit in a 32-bit int.

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Re:Facebook invented a new time unit called the ‘flick’ and ... by wiml on Wednesday January 24, 2018 @03:36AM (#16221256)
You can reasonably efficiently find the nearest rational number whose numerator and denominator fit in a given sized type. This means your rationals are imprecise, just like floats; the sparse subset of numbers they can represent exactly is different from floats' (and possibly more useful).
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