# Quadruple Precision, 128-bit Floating Point Arithmetic6

Posted by Cleve Moler,

The floating point arithmetic format that occupies 128 bits of storage is known as binary128 or quadruple precision. This blog post describes an implementation of quadruple precision programmed entirely in the MATLAB language.... read more >>

# “Half Precision” 16-bit Floating Point Arithmetic3

Posted by Cleve Moler,

The floating point arithmetic format that requires only 16 bits of storage is becoming increasingly popular. Also known as half precision or binary16, the format is useful when memory is a scarce resource.... read more >>

# Bank Format and Metric Socket Wrenches2

Posted by Cleve Moler,

A report about a possible bug in format bank and a visit to a local hardware store made me realize that doing decimal arithmetic with binary floating point numbers is like tightening a European bolt with an American socket wrench.... read more >>

# Ulps Plots Reveal Math Function Accuracy2

Posted by Cleve Moler,

"ULP" stands for "unit in the last place." An ulps plot samples a fundamental math function such as $\sin{x}$, or a more esoteric function like a Bessel function. The samples are compared with more accurate values obtained from a higher precision computation. A plot of the accuracy, measured in ulps, reveals valuable information about the underlying algorithms.... read more >>

# Fitting and Extrapolating US Census Data

Posted by Cleve Moler,

A headline in the New York Times at the end of 2016 said "Growth of U.S. Population Is at Slowest Pace Since 1937". This prompted me to revisit an old chestnut about fitting and extrapolating census data. In the process I have added a couple of nonlinear fits, namely the logistic curve and the double exponential Gompertz model.... read more >>

# My Favorite ODE

Posted by Cleve Moler,

My favorite ordinary differential equation provides a good test of ODE solvers, both numeric and symbolic. It also provides a nice illustration of the underlying existence theory and error analysis.... read more >>

# Apologies to Gram-Schmidt

Posted by Cleve Moler,

This is a follow-up to my previous follow-up, posted several days ago. A very careful reader, Bruno Bazzano, contributed a comment pointing out what he called "a small typo" in my code for the classic Gram-Schmidt algorithm. It is more than a small typo, it is a serious blunder. I must correct the code, then do more careful experiments and reword my conclusions.... read more >>

# Compare Gram-Schmidt and Householder Orthogonalization Algorithms4

Posted by Cleve Moler,

This is a follow-up to my previous post. Classical Gram-Schmidt and Modified Gram-Schmidt are two algorithms for orthogonalizing a set of vectors. Householder elementary reflectors can be used for the same task. The three algorithms have very different roundoff error properties.... read more >>

# Jim Sanderson, Two Careers: Computational Scientist and Conservationist3

Posted by Cleve Moler,

Jim Sanderson has had a fascinating professional life. He was my PhD student in math at the University of New Mexico in the 1970s. He spent almost 20 years as a computational scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, working on the lab’s supercomputers. He then developed an interest in ecology, went back to school, and is now the world’s leading authority on the preservation of small wild cats around the world…. read more >>