3 ms·

I'd like to say to everyone starting out doing math with computers: You see that old book of numerical recipes or physics problems done in Fortran? Yeah, those

I'd like to say to everyone starting out doing math with computers: You see that old book of numerical recipes or physics problems done in Fortran? Yeah, those are pretty damn good recipes. Do you need some weird function, like a gamma function or hypergeometric function? Maybe you want to minimize a function with simulated annealing or you want to design a Chebyshev filter? You can dig up a library somewhere or you can just look in that dusty old book on the shelf. There's a C version but the Fortran version is easier to find.

cwyers 11y ago
> You see that old book of numerical recipes or physics problems done in Fortran? Yeah, those are pretty damn good recipes. If I don't have that book, what's a good one to get?
- dietrichepp 11y ago
  This is the one I'm talking about: http://numerical.recipes http://numerical.recipes There are others.
- tosseraccount 11y ago
  https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/manual/html_node/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/manual/html_node/
- kirrent 11y ago
  Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing was always my go to reference. It's a classic.
cowsandmilk 11y ago
But remember, the implementations come with a license agreement, that you may not find acceptable. Here are an example of licenses, the book has some others, but they are not hugely different: http://numerical.recipes/aboutNR3license.html http://numerical.recipes/aboutNR3license.html
- anon4 11y ago
  > The following license terms and the Disclaimer of Warranty, below, apply to individual purchases of the Numerical Recipes Code download product, and to purchases of the Numerical Recipes Code CD-ROM. So all I have to do is simply pirate it and the restrictions don't apply to me?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > So all I have to do is simply pirate it and the restrictions don't apply to me? The "restrictions" are limitations on permissions which do not exist without the license. So, sure, the restrictions don't apply to you, because you have been given no permissions with regard to the work, so there is no point in imposing conditions on those permissions.
santaclaus 11y ago
Their code can be kind of buggy and often does not handle corner cases well, however. I've had some of their iterative solvers iterate forever when the initial iterate is the solution, etc.
- stephencanon 11y ago
  It's a great reference book, and does a good job of citing the work that you actually want to use for your implementation. The code in the book itself (especially the C and C++ versions) should usually be taken with several large grains of salt.

cwyers 11y ago

> You see that old book of numerical recipes or physics problems done in Fortran? Yeah, those are pretty damn good recipes. If I don't have that book, what's a good one to get?

dietrichepp 11y ago
This is the one I'm talking about: http://numerical.recipes http://numerical.recipes There are others.
tosseraccount 11y ago
https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/manual/html_node/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/manual/html_node/
kirrent 11y ago
Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing was always my go to reference. It's a classic.

cowsandmilk 11y ago

But remember, the implementations come with a license agreement, that you may not find acceptable. Here are an example of licenses, the book has some others, but they are not hugely different: http://numerical.recipes/aboutNR3license.html http://numerical.recipes/aboutNR3license.html

anon4 11y ago
> The following license terms and the Disclaimer of Warranty, below, apply to individual purchases of the Numerical Recipes Code download product, and to purchases of the Numerical Recipes Code CD-ROM. So all I have to do is simply pirate it and the restrictions don't apply to me?
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > So all I have to do is simply pirate it and the restrictions don't apply to me? The "restrictions" are limitations on permissions which do not exist without the license. So, sure, the restrictions don't apply to you, because you have been given no permissions with regard to the work, so there is no point in imposing conditions on those permissions.

santaclaus 11y ago

Their code can be kind of buggy and often does not handle corner cases well, however. I've had some of their iterative solvers iterate forever when the initial iterate is the solution, etc.

stephencanon 11y ago
It's a great reference book, and does a good job of citing the work that you actually want to use for your implementation. The code in the book itself (especially the C and C++ versions) should usually be taken with several large grains of salt.