Word: algorithm
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...someone, somewhere-but whom?-the memorandum circulated recently at Harvard Business School's division of computer service doubtless made perfect sense. It read, in full: "We have been informed by DEC that a bug in the normalization algorithm used in three MACRO instructions (FADL, FSBL and FMPL) can cause a FORTRAN double precision compare to give incorrect results. A double precision compare should be accurate to 16 digits. This bug can cause the compare to give incorrect results in the ninth digit. We will notify all Users as soon as we receive a solution to the problem from...
Starting with a rough approximation of the root derived from the mathematically well-known Pell Equation, Dutka devised a special algorithm (mathematical procedure) that enabled a computer to refine that answer to an extraordinary degree. After 471 hours of computer time and billions upon billions of individual calculations, the electronic brain ticked off an answer that was correct to at least 1,000,082 digits...