TITLE: Sliver triangle
QUESTION [11 upvotes]: Reading through geometric algorithms and code, I've encountered a term I'm not familiar with, and even the mighty google has not been that helpful: 
What is a sliver triangle ?
From what i understand it's a triangle that is almost flat (ie its minimum height is small). But i didn't find a valid information source.

REPLY [3 votes]: As an additional example of situations where a "sliver triangle" might cause trouble, Velvel Kahan shows in this article (he uses "needle" instead of "sliver" though) how Heron's usual formula for computing the area of a triangle from side lengths can give bad results in inexact arithmetic when implemented naïvely (as well as other neat stuff I won't get into here).