@zebratale @carbontwelve Calculators do make mistakes. Most pocket calculators do arithmetic in binary and so propagate errors converting decimal to binary floating point, for example not being able to represent 0.1 accurately. They use floating point to approximate rationals, so collect rounding errors for things like 1/3.
The difference is that you can create a mental model of how they fail and make sure that the inaccuracies are acceptable within your problem domain. You cannot do this with LLMs. They will fail in exciting and surprising ways. And those failure modes will change significantly across minor revisions.
@david_chisnall @zebratale @carbontwelve
"do make mistakes" I wouldn't call that a mistake. The calculator does what it should do according to the spec how to approximate real numbers with a finite number of bits.
It's (as you explain) a rounding error. A "mistake" is what Pentiums with the famous Pentium bug made.
But maybe it's my understanding of English (as a second language) that is at fault here.