For some reason this resembles the issues you get with numerical precision when doing things like ray tracing with shadow maps, or Z-figthing in depth buffers,

For some reason this resembles the issues you get with numerical precision when doing things like ray tracing with shadow maps, or Z-figthing in depth buffers, or guessing prices on Price Is Right. Here each processor is trying to achieve a market position relative to their competitors almost as an epsilon. They want to be seen as cheaper but no cheaper than necessary, and they want to retain simple terms. That drives them to tweak the 1st and 2nd order terms (constant + a scale factor).