# Questions tagged [computation]

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108 views

### Who bet against the usefulness of matrix inversion – or is it a myth?

In my linear-algebra and numerics courses, I frequently heard an anecdote about some professor betting – literally, with money – that there would never be any application where computing the actual ...
65 views

### When were brains seen as computers for the first time?

Let me state firstly that I don't think that the nervous system is a computer. Not down up, nor top down. On top of that, brains cannot truly be separated from the body. I am curious still. Who were ...
102 views

### Was Charles Sanders Peirce aware of Charles Babbage's difference engine?

Is there any indication that Charles Peirce was aware of Babbage and his work on mechanical computing?
143 views

### What did Delaunay invent Delaunay triangulations for before computers were developed?

I was teaching my students about Delaunay Triangulation which is a method for dividing a surface into triangles. This triangulation method is the basis of most computer calculations that require a ...
83 views

### Early parallel computing with human exchanging messages: is this story true?

As a student in applied maths, I can remember being told that in the 1940s there were early attempts of parallel computing not using any machine but only human calculation power. I believe the story ...
95 views

### Quotation reference: "functions which can be evaluated under 1 sec are as good as analytically available"

I have a vague memory of a (possibly-apocryphal) quote by a physicist (I remember it as being Giorgio Parisi, which could be wrong), saying something to the effect of "any function which can be ...
294 views

### Does Blum's speedup theorem have any conceptual predecessors?

Blum's speedup theorem seems to me that bears at least some superficial resemblance to Godels research on the length of proofs under certain axiomatic systems. Does Blum's speedup theorem has any ...
140 views

### Newton as the first one to establish numerical analysis as a new field of study

I was reading about the history of Newton's Method. Newton used a cubic equation, $x^3 - 2x - 5 = 0$, to show the efficacy of his method around 1670. I was wondering that why Newton would choose this ...
182 views

### Why were early electronic computers mutually incompatible?

At the beginning of the electronic computing era in the 1950s, computers were mutually incompatible both in terms of hardware and software. It was impossible to use peripherals (e.g. punched card or ...
3k views

### What was the first electronic computer?

I would like to know what is considered to be the first electronic digital computer. A literature ambiguous on this. I found these claims: ENIAC - a computer constructed by Mr. Eckert and Mr. ...
62 views

### Who is Wanner from Rosenrock-Wanner (ROW) methods?

I've spent some time with a search engine trying to find out about Wanner, a person whose surname is mentioned in the name of Rosenbrock-Wanner (ROW) methods primarily used for iteratively solving ...
204 views

### Using paper of known density to calculate area under a curve [duplicate]

Ive never seen a source for this, but I had a professor a few years back that a low tech way of calculating the area under a curve (definite integral) was to use a piece of paper with known thickness/...
77 views

### Where is the first reference to the "Z combinator", a call-by-value fix-point combinator?

I'd like to know the earliest reference to the Z-combinator. This could be either where the name was first coined, or even the first discussion of a need for an applicative-order Y combinator. I didn'...
49 views

### Frege alluded to a logic algorithm?

Somewhere (I wish I remember where) I read that Gottlob Frege, although he didn't invent a logic algorithm, alluded to one (the Quine–McCluskey algorithm? something else? converting truth tables to ...
190 views

### What is the most number of digits of a mathematical transcendental constant that have been required for a real computation?

What is the most number of digits of a transcendental mathematical constant (for example, $\pi$ or $\mathrm{e}$) that have been necessary for an actual computation? Note that I am asking about the ...
41 views

### What is the (economic, social) value of STEM archives?

I'm trying to convince my institution to improve their internal Computer Science archives, and want one of my argument angles to be based on empirical value-adds of archiving. History, library science,...
89 views

### What/When was the first radio nav system capable of triangulating your position?

What was the first radio navigation system capable of triangulating your position, and when was it built? How accurate was it and what was its range? This does not have to be GPS or a satellite ...
180 views

### Tools of the trade: were early scientists and mathematicians really "writing with feathers using light from burning animal fat?"

I've used the phrase more than once, but in this answer I wrote: closing thoughts: Realistic orbits are not perfect conics, and so they and their Keplerian elements do not represent realistic orbits. ...
434 views

### Day-to-day tasks of human computers, à la Hidden Figures movie

I was fascinated by the film Hidden Figures, and a related article from New Scientist magazine Gifted and black: The brilliant woman who got the US into space. I'm trying to understand more about ...
319 views

### Why were British WWII computing machines and their projects destroyed after the war ended?

I've seen from a number of sources that both the Colossus and the cryptological bombes operating for England were dismantled after the war ended. The Wikipedia article even says that all of Colossus' ...
1k views

### Did anybody know Pi well enough in 1592 to celebrate Pi day?

Pi to 7 decimal digits is: 3.1415926 Many people are familiar with Pi day. Celebrated on March 14 as per American date format, the holiday brings attention to the fact that the date resembles the ...
143 views

### History of computing/computation in higher education

A Google search for the first academic computer science program a couple of years ago cited a half-dozen programs in France and England that were considered proto-computer science. Current searches ...
301 views

### Have the results from Computational Physics disprove any physics theory?

We are familiar with the instances when experimental results disproved physics theories, such as the Michelson-Morley experiment. What about computational physics results? To date, is there any ...
2k views

### Has a digit ever been used to represent the number "10"?

Ten is special to humans, as there are 10 fingers on two hands, and fingers are still the basic counting medium for people. So, was there any digit representing the number "10" in a positional system ...
3k views

### What is so mysterious about Archimedes' approximation of $\sqrt 3$?

In his famous estimation of $\pi$ by inscribed and circumscribed polygons, Archimedes uses several rational approximations of irrational values; a typical example is that he states, without ...