Page 7 - Compact Numerical Methods For Computers

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The first edition of this book was written between 1975 and 1977. It may come as a
surprise that the material is still remarkably useful and applicable in the solution of
numerical problems on computers. This is perhaps due to the interest of researchers
in the development of quite complicated computational methods which require
considerable computing power for their execution. More modest techniques have
received less time and effort of investigators. However, it has also been the case that
the algorithms presented in the first edition have proven to be reliable yet simple.
The need for simple, compact numerical methods continues, even as software
packages appear which relieve the user of the task of programming. Indeed, such
methods are needed to implement these packages. They are also important when
users want to perform a numerical task within their own programs.
The most obvious difference between this edition and its predecessor is that the
algorithms are presented in Turbo Pascal, to be precise, in a form which will operate
under Turbo Pascal 3.01a. I decided to use this form of presentation for the following
reasons:

(i) Pascal is quite similar to the Step-and-Description presentation of algorithms
used previously;
(ii) the codes can be typeset directly from the executable Pascal code, and the
very difficult job of proof-reading and correction avoided;
(iii) the Turbo Pascal environment is very widely available on microcomputer
systems, and a number of similar systems exist.

Section 1.6 and appendix 4 give some details about the codes and especially the
driver and support routines which provide examples of use.
The realization of this edition was not totally an individual effort. My research
work, of which this book represents a product, is supported in part by grants from
the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The Mathema-
tics Department of the University of Queensland and the Applied Mathematics
Division of the New Zealand Department of Scientific and Industrial Research
provided generous hospitality during my 1987-88 sabbatical year, during which a
great part of the code revision was accomplished. Thanks are due to Mary Walker-
Smith for reading early versions of the codes, to Maureen Clarke of IOP Publishing
Ltd for reminders and encouragement, and to the Faculty of Administration of the
University of Ottawa for use of a laser printer to prepare the program codes. Mary
Nash has been a colleague and partner for two decades, and her contribution to this
project in many readings, edits, and innumerable other tasks has been a large one.
In any work on computation, there are bound to be errors, or at least program

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