The Mathematical-Function Computation Handbook (PDF)

All major computer programming languages-as well as the disciplines of science and engineering more broadly-require computation of elementary and special functions of mathematics. The MathCW Software Library emphasizes portability, precisely because the code needs to capable of use on a wide variety of platforms.

This highly comprehensive handbook provides a substantial advance in such computation, extending the function coverage of major programming languages well beyond their international standards, including full support for decimal floating-point arithmetic. Written with clarity and focusing on the C language, the work pays extensive attention to little-understood aspects of floating-point and integer arithmetic, and to software portability, as well as to important historical architectures. It extends support to a future 256-bit, floating-point format offering 70 decimal digits of precision.

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This highly practical text/reference is an invaluable tool for advanced undergraduates, recording many lessons of the intermingled history of computer hardware and software, numerical algorithms, and mathematics. In addition, professional numerical analysts and others will find the handbook of real interest and utility because it builds on research by the mathematical software community over the last four decades.