[civility]

So umm, more than a "difference in the realm of 6-8 significant digits"?

[firethief]

That construction can turn any residual N digits out into a first digit difference. It wouldn't matter without making comparisons with tolerance way under the noise floor of the dataset. But yes, you have technically invented a situation that differs from that real-world anecdote in regard to that property, in an extremely literal interpretation.

[civility]

And here I was, worried I might be tedious or pedantic, trying to argue that floating point is just not that simple. You've really outdone me in that regard.