I think Jeff is right, but there is a minor bit of history that is missing.
The Intel 8087 numeric coprocessor, announced in 1980, was (in effect) based on
a draft version of what later became the IEEE754-1985 standard, and the 8087
included "NaN" as part of its exception handling routines.? However,
these days "NaN" is usually translated as "not a number",
while the Intel manuals for the 8087 usually translate the acronym as
"Non-Number".
So, "NaN" is just a bit older than "IEEE754-1985" might
suggest.
>AFAIK NaN originated in the floating point standard IEEE754-1985 as a range
of bit >patterns that have all 1 bits in the exponent, and the convention to
convert such bit >patterns to the string "NaN" is an obvious way to
handle output of such patterns, >regardless of language. Pasting a % symbol
after a converted floating point number is >likewise common. Not sure I see R
lurking here... could just as easily be Python or Java >or some other
programming language.>On October 29, 2021 10:55:52 AM PDT, Avi Gross via
R-help <r-help at r-project.org> <mailto:r-help at r-project.org>
wrote:
> Bert,R is used all over the place, sometimes not visibly.A search shows the
NY times using it in 2011, 2009, ...:>
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.h>
tml>
https://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2011/03/how-the-new-york-times-uses-r-f>
or-data-visualization.htmlThere also seem to be several packages for interfacing
with the NY Times,albeit that does not mean much about their usage.However, the
error message using the phrase "NaN" is not a guarantee asthere are
other languages that use the concept, albeit may not capitalize itthe same way.
But in an error message, any programmer can be setting up thetext. According to
this reference, Rust and ECMAScript also call it a NaN:>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaN> I am a tad confused it lists a form of
"NaN%" without specifying if anylanguage specifically uses it and your
example ended with a percent sign.-----Original Message-----From: R-help >
<r-help-bounces at r-project.org> <mailto:r-help-bounces at
r-project.org>> On Behalf Of Bert GunterSent: Friday, October 29, 2021
11:36 AMTo: R-help > <r-help at r-project.org> <mailto:r-help at
r-project.org>> Subject: [R] Probably off topic but I hope amusingThere
was a little discussion today (yet again) about floating pointarithmetic.
Perhaps related to this, I subscribe to the online NYTimes,which flashes U.S.
stock index prices at the top of its home page. Today,instead of the Nasdaq
price being flashed, there was this:undefined-NaN%I wonder if this means that R
is being used as a backend for this or whetherthis way of displaying what I
think is 0/0 in FP is common.Anyway, what do you think most readers reaction to
this was?!Best to all,Bert ______________________________________________>
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