| "The Table-Maker's Dilemma" https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/LOG10HAF.TXT This is the best source I could find, funny enough the author doesn't explain the name "table maker". I suppose it's from the parable of a table maker who finds that one leg is too long, so they sand down that leg, only to find that another leg is too long, so they sand that down... slowly sanding away all the legs. As a simple programmer I don't understand the dilemma. I do understand that sin, tan, sqrt, etc., take one argument, so you can guarantee a certain precision for them, at least in 32-bit floats, whereas a log in arbitrary base has two inputs, so its input space is huge and it's hard to guarantee anything, especially for 64-bit doubles. If someone could write up a good explanation that could be its own HN post |