MaPSS: Maths Postgraduate Seminar Series: Jonathon Tidswell -- An Introduction to Monte-Carlo Arithmetic (aka Floating Point Arithmetic)

Hello all,

The next MaPSS talk of this semester will be at 17:00 on Mon 15th October in Carslaw
535. It’s a great opportunity to meet fellow postgrads, listen to an interesting talk,
and of course get free food!

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Speaker: Jonathon Tidswell

Title: An Introduction to Monte-Carlo Arithmetic (aka Floating Point Arithmetic)

Abstract: Monte-Carlo Arithmetic (MCA) was introduced in 1997 as a probabilistic
extension of Floating Point Arithmetic (FP) to recover standard
properties of arithmetic (esp. associativity). Since 2011 its been used
in three separate computer engineering projects as a probabilistic
numerical analysis technique. However, it has failed to gain any
appreciable foothold despite the nominal elegance of the approach.

In this talk I will introduce/review traditional (IEEE) Floating Point
Arithmetic to consider a simple example (from published literature) of
Monte-Carlo Arithmetic. Using this example I will identify two
theoretical issues and my (current) plans for addressing them.

Time (and audience) permitting I will briefly outline some work to
(marginally) improve calculation of trigonometric functions based on a
chance discovery earlier this year (using the same properties of
floating point arithmetic).

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See you there!

Details can also be found on the school’s new Postgraduate Society website: 
http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/MaPS/mapss.html 
 
Cheers,
Alex