Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm
From: tim@isis.usi.utah.edu (Timothy E. Burns)
Subject: Numerical Recipes (was Re: Wanted: fortran source for matrix operations using PVM)
Organization: Utah Supercomputing Institute, University of Utah
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 1994 19:55:53 GMT
Message-ID: <TIM.94Oct16135553@isis.usi.utah.edu>


   Or you may try the book " Numerical Receipt for fortran ". I have not read
   the whole book. But as I know, there are many source codes for mathematics
   ans scientific user.

   Brenda
   .

Dear Brenda,

I know you mean well, but this is poor advice.  I can think of no
algorithm in numerical recipes that treats important issues in 
optimization.  Even from a pedagogical point of view, you are
much better off learning about linear algebra algorithms from Golub
and Van Loan's _Matrix_Computations_.

Books like _Numerical_Recipes_ have done a lot of damage to scientific
computing, and I know that once I was victim.  From learning the hard
way, I now look to many of the packages on netlib for solutions.  My
experience is that these algorithms are portable to a variety of
architectures, are numerically robust, and easy to use.

Sincerely,
Tim Burns

--
Tim Burns                               tim@osiris.usi.utah.edu
Utah Supercomputing Institute           (Day) 801-581-5172
85 SSB, Univ. of Utah, SLC, UT 84112    http://usi.utah.edu/burns/tim.html

