Random Interval Arithmetic is Closer to Common Sense: An Observation

Authors

Rene Alt
Jean-Luc Lamotte
Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

4-2005

Comments

UTEP-CS-04-33a.

Published in the Proceedings of the 17th World Congress of the International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation IMACS'2005, Paris, France, July 11-15, 2005.

Abstract

From the commonsense viewpoint, if on a bridge whose weight we know with an accuracy of 1 ton, we place a car whose weight we know with an accuracy of 5 kg, then the accuracy with which we know the overall weight of a bridge with a car on it should still be 1 ton. This is what an engineer or a physicist would say. Alas, this is not so in traditional interval arithmetic. In this paper, we show that, in contrast to traditional interval arithmetic, the random interval arithmetic (proposed by the first two authors) actually has this important property.