apache/spark — pull request #1659 by srowen (2014-07-30 11:40:33+00:00)
Title: SPARK-2748 [MLLIB] [GRAPHX] Loss of precision for small arguments to Math.exp, Math.log

In a few places in MLlib, an expression of the form `log(1.0 + p)` is evaluated. When p is so small that `1.0 + p == 1.0`, the result is 0.0. However the correct answer is very near `p`. This is why `Math.log1p` exists.

Similarly for one instance of `exp(m) - 1` in GraphX; there's a special `Math.expm1` method.

While the errors occur only for very small arguments, given their use in machine learning algorithms, this is entirely possible.

Also note the related PR for Python: https://github.com/apache/spark/pull/1652