# Patience Chinese Rings Puzzle

MIT's Professor Daniel Frey recently introduced me to an ancient mechanical puzzle known as "Chinese Rings", "Patience", or "Baguenaudier." I have modified Daniel's simulator to produce a new app. The state space of the puzzle forms a hypercube.... read more >>

# Ulps Plots Reveal Math Function Accuracy2

"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

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 >>

# Apologies to Gram-Schmidt

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

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 >>

# Householder Reflections and the QR Decomposition1

The QR decomposition is often the first step in algorithms for solving many different matrix problems, including linear systems, eigenvalues, and singular values. Householder reflections are the preferred tool for computing the QR decomposition.... read more >>

# Compare Gram-Schmidt and Householder Orthogonalization Algorithms1

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 >>

# 19 Dubious Ways to Compute the Zeros of a Polynomial2

During the SIAM Annual Meeting this summer in Boston there will be a special minisymposium Wednesday afternoon, July 13, honoring Charlie Van Loan, who is retiring at Cornell. (I use "at" because he's not leaving Ithaca.) I will give a talk titled "19 Dubious Way to Compute the Zeros of a Polynomial", following in the footsteps of the paper about the matrix exponential that Charlie and I wrote in 1978 and updated 25 years later. I really don't have 19 ways to compute polynomial zeros, but then I only have a half hour for my talk. Most of the methods have been described previously in this blog. Today's post is mostly about "roots".... read more >>