I recently acquired a GPU, a graphics processing unit. It's called a GPU because such processors were originally intended to speed up graphics. But MATLAB uses it to speed up computation. Let's see how the gpuArray object benchmarks on my machine.... read more >>

Find the optimum traveling salesman tour through the capitals of the 48 contiguous states in the USA.... read more >>

How far apart can you expect two points chosen at random in the unit square to be? I found this problem on the YouTube channel maintained by Presh Talwalkar, Mind Your Decisions. He correctly calls it a very hard puzzle. At first, I guessed the answer might be $1/2$. But the correct answer is more interesting than that.... read more >>

"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 >>

I don't recall where I found this seasonal fractal. And I can't explain how it works. So please submit a comment if you can shed any light on either of these questions.... read more >>

This is the third in a multi-part series on the MATLAB random number generators. MATLAB has used variants of George Marsaglia's ziggurat algorithm to generate normally distributed random numbers for almost twenty years. ... read more >>