4 ms·

NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions

63 points by espeed 8y ago

turingspiritfly 8y ago
Pretty cool. Out of curiosity, who stashes these books (the hardcopy version) on their bookshelves and why? Am very interested to know
- Iwan-Zotow 8y ago
  folks who likes to read?
- nomadiccoder 8y ago
  University libraries... out of tradition, but not for much longer??
- enriquto 8y ago
  I have my dear copy of Abramowitz and Stegun on the bookshelf next to my desk and I refer to it nearly weekly. E.g., yesterday I had a postdoc asking me about a strange numerical scheme for computing derivatives using five points that he found, and looking at the appropriate page on the handbook we could easily find its name, history, and main properties; and thanks to that, understand whether a different scheme would be more appropriate in his case. Then, during some of my courses on numerical analysis, I like to brandish the book in front of the students, and explain to them how awesome it is.
- bigtimber 8y ago
  I can't claim to have it on my bookshelf anymore, but DID have the original hardcopy on my bookshelf for many years back in the 70's and early 80's when I was programming some low-level math libraries and needed to refer to some approximation techniques (e.g., Chebyshev for logarithms). EDIT: oops, just realized that you were referring to a later version of the classic. I was referring to Abramowitz and Stegun's Handbook of Mathematical Functions with formulas, graphs, and mathematical tables (1964).
codewritinfool 8y ago
This is nice
- nomadiccoder 8y ago
  no its nist
Iwan-Zotow 8y ago
This is pretty much a descendant to famous Abramowitz&Stegun Mathematical Functions handbook
Koshkin 8y ago
One of the nicer things about digital online resources of this kind is that they can be updated as soon as an error has been found. The scan of the classic version can be downloaded as a PDF from http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~aps/research/projects/as/book.php http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~aps/research/projects/as/book.php.

63 points by espeed 8y ago

Pretty cool. Out of curiosity, who stashes these books (the hardcopy version) on their bookshelves and why? Am very interested to know

Iwan-Zotow 8y ago
folks who likes to read?
nomadiccoder 8y ago
University libraries... out of tradition, but not for much longer??
enriquto 8y ago
I have my dear copy of Abramowitz and Stegun on the bookshelf next to my desk and I refer to it nearly weekly. E.g., yesterday I had a postdoc asking me about a strange numerical scheme for computing derivatives using five points that he found, and looking at the appropriate page on the handbook we could easily find its name, history, and main properties; and thanks to that, understand whether a different scheme would be more appropriate in his case. Then, during some of my courses on numerical analysis, I like to brandish the book in front of the students, and explain to them how awesome it is.
bigtimber 8y ago
I can't claim to have it on my bookshelf anymore, but DID have the original hardcopy on my bookshelf for many years back in the 70's and early 80's when I was programming some low-level math libraries and needed to refer to some approximation techniques (e.g., Chebyshev for logarithms). EDIT: oops, just realized that you were referring to a later version of the classic. I was referring to Abramowitz and Stegun's Handbook of Mathematical Functions with formulas, graphs, and mathematical tables (1964).

codewritinfool 8y ago

This is nice

nomadiccoder 8y ago
no its nist

Iwan-Zotow 8y ago

This is pretty much a descendant to famous Abramowitz&Stegun Mathematical Functions handbook

Koshkin 8y ago

One of the nicer things about digital online resources of this kind is that they can be updated as soon as an error has been found. The scan of the classic version can be downloaded as a PDF from http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~aps/research/projects/as/book.php http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~aps/research/projects/as/book.php.