Since we are working with fairly large matrices in the shadowbox assignment, I started to think about how to do matrix multiplication efficiently on large matrices just out of curiosity. I have heard in past classes that the fastest known algorithm to do this is O(n^2.376) but nothing else was said so I decided […]

I am sure that everyone has used or heard of arbitrary-precision arithmetic which, as the name implies, can be used to represent a number to arbitrary (but finite) precision, thus going beyond the limitations of a single or double floating point number. It is not entirely clear how arbitrary precision arithmetic works (or at […]

In class, we have been talking about various topics related to floating point numbers so I was interested in their real world application, specifically what happens when they are not applied correctly (because disasters are more interesting to read about). I did some searching and found several incidents where a careless application of floating […]