4 ms·

That's a good question, and I'm not entirely sure of the answer. I'm pretty sure my uncle believed it did, but I'm not sure how in touch he was with the state o

by daoudc 15y ago

That's a good question, and I'm not entirely sure of the answer. I'm pretty sure my uncle believed it did, but I'm not sure how in touch he was with the state of the art, as he didn't use the internet. His idea of research was photocopying articles (and whole books, in particular I remember vol 2 of Knuth's TAOCP) from the British library. My plan is to get some of these algorithms running and compare running times with the other open source ones available.

jnbiche 15y ago
Did you find any copies of a data input file for (at least some of) the Fortran programs, called recl.dat? EDIT: I am so intrigued by this that I asked the question above without saying thank you for releasing this. So thank you! I don't know much Fortran but if ever there was something to induce me to dive in, it's this. I've compiled his test program using gfortran and am looking into some of the others.
- daoudc 15y ago
  Yes, it seems to contain a lot of prime numbers (36,500 to be precise). I haven't uploaded any data files since the total size is 3Gb.
  - walrus 15y ago
    Can you make a torrent of the data files and put the .torrent file on GitHub?
    - daoudc 15y ago
      I've collected what I think are the most important files. They compress very well because they seem to be very inefficiently stored (lots of repetition). The compressed collection is now on github.
primecommenter 15y ago
While perhaps not an advance, the algorithms implemented are state-of-the-art (GNFS, Pollard's p-1 test, Williams' p+1 test, cyclotomic polynomial test). But whatever the running times, it is an astounding artifact.
- daoudc 15y ago
  There is a year or two of work on top of the documentation I have included. Also, I think it is likely that there are some incremental improvements to the existing algorithms that my uncle put in place without necessarily documenting. Whilst these might not be theoretically interesting, their combined effect could be significant. There may also be some new maths in there too, as he was undoubtedly a brilliant mathematician.
  - ronnier 15y ago
    Do you have any kind of bio on him? Even a picture?
    - daoudc 15y ago
      I'm hoping to get both of these. It needs some collaboration with my family to do it properly.
- wbhart 15y ago
  It's remarkable that we refer to algorithms invented as "late" as the 90's as state-of-the-art. But sadly, it is so.
  - primecommenter 15y ago
    Even more remarkable is that they build directly upon the 400-year-old method of Fermat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_factorization_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_factorization_method).
    - 15y ago

by daoudc 15y ago

jnbiche 15y ago

Did you find any copies of a data input file for (at least some of) the Fortran programs, called recl.dat? EDIT: I am so intrigued by this that I asked the question above without saying thank you for releasing this. So thank you! I don't know much Fortran but if ever there was something to induce me to dive in, it's this. I've compiled his test program using gfortran and am looking into some of the others.

daoudc 15y ago
Yes, it seems to contain a lot of prime numbers (36,500 to be precise). I haven't uploaded any data files since the total size is 3Gb.
- walrus 15y ago
  Can you make a torrent of the data files and put the .torrent file on GitHub?
  - daoudc 15y ago
    I've collected what I think are the most important files. They compress very well because they seem to be very inefficiently stored (lots of repetition). The compressed collection is now on github.

primecommenter 15y ago

While perhaps not an advance, the algorithms implemented are state-of-the-art (GNFS, Pollard's p-1 test, Williams' p+1 test, cyclotomic polynomial test). But whatever the running times, it is an astounding artifact.

daoudc 15y ago
There is a year or two of work on top of the documentation I have included. Also, I think it is likely that there are some incremental improvements to the existing algorithms that my uncle put in place without necessarily documenting. Whilst these might not be theoretically interesting, their combined effect could be significant. There may also be some new maths in there too, as he was undoubtedly a brilliant mathematician.
- ronnier 15y ago
  Do you have any kind of bio on him? Even a picture?
  - daoudc 15y ago
    I'm hoping to get both of these. It needs some collaboration with my family to do it properly.
wbhart 15y ago
It's remarkable that we refer to algorithms invented as "late" as the 90's as state-of-the-art. But sadly, it is so.
- primecommenter 15y ago
  Even more remarkable is that they build directly upon the 400-year-old method of Fermat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_factorization_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_factorization_method).
  - 15y ago