Computer Approximations

by John Fraser Hart

This handbook is intended to acquaint users with methods for designing function subroutines and, in the case of the most commonly needed functions, to provide them with the necessary tables to do so efficiently.

352 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1978

About the author

John Fraser Hart was an American geographer. Over the course of his career, he published over 150 scholarly papers and over a dozen books. He taught over 50,000 university students in his 65 years of teaching from 1949 until his retirement in 2015.

Reviews

[Nick Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

it doesn't get much drier than this, oy vey. a good enough book should you need hellapproximate an elliptic integral on hardware of Watts Riots vintage. i mean, the math hasn't changed (though why five pages are devoted to Chebyshev expansions is beyond me; anyone reading "computer approximations" knows Chebyshev), but the authors assume one doesn't have, say, a desktop calculator and thoughtfully provide half the book's weight in trig/log/specialfunction tables. trees well used! i need know coefficients for a cosine let me just scooch down to the local library. how did anything ever get built before 1988 or so?

the following page is pretty wholly indicative. if you like these pages, you'll like this book. otherwise, i'd maybe get the latest claptrap from dan brown.