The Netflix Prize is a competition that began on October 2, 2006, sponsored by Netflix in order to improve its movie-matching algorithms. If you’re not yet familiar, Netflix is a company that specializes in direct-mail movie rental, meaning you simply ask for a list of movies online and Netflix will mail them straight to you. […]

Although the theory of numerical techniques may seem dry and utterly technical, and their effects mostly noticed only when incorrectly applied (just count the number of ’rounding error caused tragic mishap to occur’ posts), I wanted to show an example of how a specific numerical technique and its interpretation can actually dominate an entire disciplines and […]

The standard forms of numerical representation on computers are of course, integers and floating point numbers, depending on need. In cases where arbitrary precision is desired (as dgw25 and ecowatcher pointed out), one can turn to iterative methods and string representation to try to reach the desired level of precision. But let’s be honest here–this is […]