Re: A question on Newton's Method

On the Sat, 2 Apr 2005 20:24:58 -0700, James Van Buskirk wrote:
><beliavsky@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:1112319545.108436.153790@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>> Fortran 95 is a good language to learn the imperative (procedural)
>> style of programming for numerical work, with a few elements of
>> functional programming (pure and elemental functions) thrown in. The
>> g95 compiler http://www.g95.org is free .
>
>> What "computer-specific problems" do you avoid by using OCaml instead
>> of Fortran? Do you mean "platform-specific"?
>
> I can't believe you're wasting your time debating someone who
> tinks that a lisp-like language is suitable for a beginner in
> numerical analysis. How many times have you seen Mathematica
> just go into the tank and never come back? Not to mention
> that the syntax is just sooo obscure, for e.g. D[f[x],x] doesn't
> yield the derivative of function f. It takes way more time to
> figure out what the syntax is to ask Mathematica for the answer
> than it does to just work out the answer by hand. It's a total
> waste of time and math departments should just forget about
> Mathematica and TI-85s that they seem to be so hung up on and
> go back to teaching math or whatever it was they used to do.

Yes, but what's the point of discussing Mathematica in the context of
NUMERICAL analysis? It's not its main strength, is it?

--
Roman Werpachowski
/--------==============--------\
| http://www.cft.edu.pl/~roman |
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.

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