[E-Lang] Seminar: TUESDAY, April 17

[Bill Frantz]

I think this seminar will be of interest to the people who are interested
in the IEEE floating point and collections semantic issues.

>X-From_: owner-colloq-local-list@lists.Stanford.EDU  Wed Apr 11 20:07:34 2001
>Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 14:03:42 -0700 (PDT)
>From: "Gene Golub, 650/723-3124" <golub@sccm.Stanford.EDU>
>Reply-To: "Gene Golub, 650/723-3124" <golub@sccm.Stanford.EDU>
>To: sccm-seminars@lists.Stanford.EDU, students@sccm.Stanford.EDU
>Subject: Seminar: TUESDAY, April 17
>Sender: owner-colloq-local-list@lists.Stanford.EDU
>Precedence: bulk
>
>
>
>
>DATE:    Tuesday, April 17
>TIME:    4:15 p.m.
>ROOM:    Durand 450
>SPEAKER: Prof. William Kahan
>FROM:    Dept.  Mathematics, and Dept. Elect. Eng. & Computer Sci.,
>         University of California, Berkeley
>E-MAIL:  wkahan@cs.berkeley.edu
>TITLE:   What has the  Volume of a Tetrahedron  to do with Computer
>         Programming Languages?
>
>ABSTRACT: The computation of a tetrahedron's volume has been chosen as
>a didactic example elementary enough to be tolerated by the intended
>audience (who have forgotten most of the calculus and linear algebra
>they encountered in college) yet difficult enough to impart an
>appreciation of the challenges faced by applications programmers
>lacking in numerical experience though clever about other things.
>These challenges are exacerbated by programming languages like C++ and
>Java that perpetuate practices, accepted only as expedients in the
>1960s, that now inflate the languages capture cross-section for error.
>By treating the tetrahedron's volume as a case study we can formulate
>better guidelines for programming languages to handle floating-point
>arithmetic in ways compatible with the few rules of thumb that should
>be (but are still not being) taught to the vast majority of
>programmers, who learn no more about floating-point than they hear in
>a programming class or read in a programming language manual.
>Complaining about education rarely improves it; our efforts are better
>spent redesigning computer systems and languages to attenuate
>occasional harm caused by well-intentioned ignorance among the
>multitudes.
>
>
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