This is really just an example of geeks overcomplicating everything. The majority of applications don't require the bleeding edge speed or accuracy, they can g

This is really just an example of geeks overcomplicating everything. The majority of applications don't require the bleeding edge speed or accuracy, they can get by just fine with this book. One example that comes to my mind is the Lanczos approximation given by NR to estimate the Gamma function. With the coefficients given in NR you can be accurate to seven significant digits or so. While there are better approximations available, seven sig figs is plenty good enough for me. NASA allegedly uses 15 sig figs, so I guess if you are literally a rocket scientist then NR isn't for you. The benefit of NR is that it has a lot of workable solutions in a single volume. I save time by having a single source solution that makes it easy to look stuff up. TL;DR: Perfect is the enemy of the good. Unless your project actually demands the best possible algorithm, get your answer faster from NR and be on your way.