The Mathematical-Function Computation Handbook: Programming Using the MathCW Portable Software Library

This highly comprehensive handbook provides a substantial advance in the computation of elementary and special functions of mathematics, 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.

Select Topics and Features: references an exceptionally useful, author-maintained MathCW website, containing source code for the book’s software, compiled libraries for numerous systems, pre-built C compilers, and other related materials; offers a unique approach to covering mathematical-function computation using decimal arithmetic; provides extremely versatile appendices for interfaces to numerous other languages:  Ada, C#, C++, Fortran, Java, and Pascal; presupposes only basic familiarity with computer programming in a common language, as well as early level algebra; supplies a library that readily adapts for existing scripting languages, with minimal effort; supports both binary and decimal arithmetic, in up to 10 different floating-point formats; covers a significant portion (with highly accurate implementations) of the U.S National Institute of Standards and Technology’s 10-year project to codify mathematical functions.

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.