nan

3 definitions found

nan - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

  Nan \Nan\, interj. [For anan.]
     Anan. [Prov. Eng.]
     [1913 Webster]

nan - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :

  nan
      n 1: your grandmother
      2: the mother of your father or mother [syn: grandma,
         grandmother, granny, grannie, gran, nan, nanna]
      3: a river of western Thailand flowing southward to join the
         Ping River to form the Chao Phraya [syn: Nan, Nan River]
      4: leavened bread baked in a clay oven in India; usually shaped
         like a teardrop [syn: nan, naan]

nan - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  Not-a-Number
  NaN
  
     <mathematics> (NaN) An IEEE floating point representation
     for the result of a numerical operation which cannot return a
     valid number value.  A NaN can result from multiplying an
     infinity by a zero, or from subtracting one infinity from
     another [what else?].
  
     NaN is encoded as a special bit pattern [what pattern?]
     which would otherwise represent a floating-point number.  It
     is used to signal error returns where other mechanisms are not
     convenient, e.g. a hardware floating-point unit and to allow
     errors to propagate through a calculation.
  
     Similar bit patterns represent positive and negative
     overflow and underflow and the positive and negative
     infinities resulting from division by zero.
  
     Bit patterns (http://psc.edu/general/software/packages/ieee/ieee.html)
     .
  
     [ANSI/IEEE Std 754-1985].
  
     [Correct?]
  
     (2001-04-01)