Every floating-point rounding error, Wilkinson teaches us, can be interpreted by backward error analysis: it’s the exact result, but for slightly perturbed data.

Every quantum mechanical measurement, Everett teaches us, can be interpreted as the splitting of two universes: one where this choice happens, the other with the other.

I like to imagine a kind of Everett–Wilkinson interpretation. Every floating-point operation is exact, hooray! — but each time one happens, we are jiggled ever so slightly, just one part in 10¹⁶, into a neighboring universe.

[17 February 2015]