A selection of papers authored (or co-authored) by Jonathan Borwein and Peter Borwein has been published by PSIpress. The selection includes several papers of significant historical interest:
Jonathan Borwein and Peter Borwein, Experimental and computational mathematics: Selected writings, PSIpress, Portland, OR, 2010.
Here is a brief synopsis, from the publisher’s website:
A quiet revolution in mathematical computing and scientific visualization took place in the latter half of the 20th century. These developments have dramatically enhanced modes of mathematical insight and opportunities for “exploratory” computational experimentation. This volume collects the experimental and computational contributions of Jonathan and Peter Borwein over the
Continue reading Selected papers of Jonathan Borwein and Peter Borwein
A German translation of The Computer as Crucible, which was co-authored by one of the present bloggers, has been published by Springer-Verlag. Here is a synopsis of the English edition:
Keith Devlin and Jonathan Borwein, two well-known mathematicians with expertise in different mathematical specialties but with a common interest in experimentation in mathematics, have joined forces to create this introduction to experimental mathematics. They cover a variety of topics and examples to give the reader a good sense of the current state of play in the rapidly growing new field of experimental mathematics. The writing is clear and the explanations
Continue reading German edition of The Computer as Crucible
A book on techniques for tuning the performance of large scientific computations has just been published by one of the present bloggers:
David H. Bailey, Robert F. Lucas and Samuel W. Williams, “Performance Tuning of Scientific Applications,” CRC Press (Taylor and Francis Group), Boca Raton, FL, 2011. Amazon.com.
Here is the press synopsis:
With contributions from some of the most notable experts in the field, Performance Tuning of Scientific Applications presents current research in performance analysis. Along with an overview of modern computer architecture, the book focuses on the following areas:
Performance monitoring: Describes the state of the art in
Continue reading New book on performance science
As we mentioned in an earlier Blog post, IBM has been developing a state-of-the-art question-answering computer system, named “Watson” (for Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM).
The basic computer hardware is a module from IBM’s “BlueGene” series, which, in the configuration used for this research project, would cost somewhat over $1,000,000. The software employs some state-of-the-art techniques for automatically extracting information from large files and databases. After completion of the project, IBM intends to market this system as an intelligent natural-language information query system. Potential uses range from a tool for online user support personnel to corporate planning
Continue reading IBM’s Watson to compete on Jeopardy! with Jennings with Rutter
Many are familiar with the old and amusing puzzle “As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives…” Recently scholars examining the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (c. 1650 BCE) were started to find a surprisingly similar version: Seven houses have seven cats that each eat seven mice that each eat seven grains of barley. Each barley grain would have produced seven hekat of grain. (One hekat was roughly 1.3 gallons.) So how many total items are described? Answer: 19,607.
The Rhind papyrus, which dates to 1650 B.C., is one of several papyri exhibiting ancient Egypt’s mathematical
Continue reading Ancient math puzzles in 3600-year-old Egyptian papyrus
Those readers in the New York City area might like to pay a visit to NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. Its museum is currently displaying an exhibit of Babylonian mathematical artifacts, gleaned from the collections of Columbia University, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, dated from 1900 to 1700 BCE. The artifacts include many items entirely familiar to the modern age — student exercises, word problems and calculation tables.
By examining these tablets, scholars have been also to decipher the Babylonian schemes for performing arithmetic. They have shown that the Babylonians used the same symbol to
Continue reading NYU’s treasure of Babylonian mathematics
On 9 Nov 2010, the New York Times ran an interesting online feature “What’s Next in Science?”. This series of article includes predictions from a number of scientists in different fields as to what they believe will be the most significant developments of the next few years. One of these articles is by Steven Strogatz of Cornell University, who has contributed semi-popular articles in the Times before.
In this piece, he starts out with the statement
We’re going to see scientific results that are correct, that are predictive, but are without explanation. We may be able to do
Continue reading What’s next in science?
The Fourth International Workshop on Symbolic-Numeric Computation (SNC2011) will be held on 7-9 June 2011 in San Jose, California. Invited speakers include Jonathan Borwein (one of the bloggers on this site), James Demmel (an expert in numerical analysis and linear algebra at UC Berkeley) and Stephen Watt (an expert in symbolic computing at the University of Western Ontario). The conference will examine a wide range of relevant topics, including computational mathematics, numerical algorithms, symbolic algorithms, parallel implementations and experimental mathematics applications.
Additional details for the conference, including due dates for submission, are available at the conference website: SNC2011.
A Chinese supercomputer appears to have taken the #1 spot on the Top500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. Although the final rankings of the twice-yearly published list is not yet final, Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist who co-manages the Top500 list, says that “it is unlikely we will see a system that is faster.” Dongarra adds that the Chinese computer, which achieved 2.5 Pflop/s (2.5 x 1015 floating-point operations per second) on the industry-standard Linpack benchmark, “blows away the existing No. 1 machine.”
The new system, according to a separate report by Dongarra, has 7168
Continue reading Chinese supercomputer is world’s #1 system
The present bloggers have written some new papers and presentations on pi that are targeted to a wide audience. These files are freely available for download:
David H. Bailey, “A short history of pi formulas,” manuscript, Oct 2010, available at PDF. Jonathan Borwein, “The Life of Pi,” manuscript, Sep 2010, available at PDF. Jonathan Borwein, “The Life of Pi,” presentation, Sep 2010, PDF.
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