Real Computing Made Real: Preventing Errors in Scientific and Engineering Calculations
Real Computing Made Real
By Forman S. Acton
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: 1995-11-13
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0691036632
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780691036632
Binding: Hardcover
For those engineers and scientists who use computers to solve their problems only to discover new, subtle problems in their results, this book is a welcome quick guide to trouble-shooting. Offering practical advice on detecting and removing the insidious bugs that plague finite-precision calculations, real Computing outlines techniques for preserving significant figures, avoiding extraneous solutions (those ridiculous "answers" that turn up all too often), and finding efficient iterative processes for solving nonlinear equations. Anyone who computes with real numbers (for example, floating-point numbers stored with limited precision) tends to pick up a few computing "tricks"--techniques that increase the frequency of useful answers. But where there might be ample guidance for a computor grappling with linear problems, there is little help for someone negotiating the nonlinear world--and it is this need that Forman Acton addresses. His book presents a wealth of examples and exercises (with answers) to help a reader develop problemformulating skills--thus learning to avoid the common pitfalls that software packages seldom detect. It presumes some experience with standard numerical methods--but for beginners in real computing, it will lend a touch of realism to topics often slighted in introductory texts.
Summary: A Must-Have for every programmer
Rating: 5
In the acknowledgements to the first edition of Numerical Recipes in Fortran, Wm. Press et al write "We also wish to ackowledge two individuals we have never met: Forman Acton, whose 1970 textbook Numerical Methods That Work has surely left its stylistic mark on us...." (The second being Donald Knuth) In Real Computing, Acton expands in greater detail upon the theme of the earlier work, which is that good computing routines are problem-specific. That insight and understanding are called-for; recipes and black box routines are insufficient. In the fifties, with powerful mainframes few and far between, engineers farmed out their computations to a computing center. There you could find the guys who knew intelligent machine computing. When the IBM 370 came along, every university had its own machine, and computations became in-house. The expertise you found in the old centers wasn't there. Acton worked in one of those centers, and this book is written to guide the reader in acquiring some of the old magic.
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