NIST Releases Updated Handbook of Math Functions

An anonymous reader writes "NIST announced the publishing of the NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions reference text (967 pp), also available in digital form at the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions. Access it with a MathML-enabled browser (Firefox or IE+plugin) to view equations as scalable text rather than bitmaps; the 3-D graphs can also be viewed with a VRML plugin for local rotating / zooming." The original Handbook of Mathematical Functions was published 46 years ago; the revision has been in the works for a decade.

Comments

Ob

[Hognoxious]

Let the number of the post be defined by a monotonically increasing function f, such that the initial value of f is zero.

Re:Ob

[SoVeryTired]

f(x) = x satisfies that condition.

Perhaps you meant monotonically decreasing nonnegative function on the nonnegative reals with f(0) = 0, or something to that effect...

As I'm sure you can tell, I'm a big hit at parties.

I've had my copy for 40 years

[richg74]

And I have found it to be invaluable reference. It's not a textbook; it assumes you basically know the math, but just need to check the details. One other feature, quite handy for programmers of quantitative applications: it has approximations for many functions (e.g., the cumulative normal density function), with notes on their accuracy and range of applicability.

Re:42

[icensnow]

Sigh. The full, legal, proper name of my country is "United States of America," it is the only country with "America" in its name, and we refer to its people as "Americans" by the same construction that we (in English) refer to people from the Federal Republic of Germany as Germans or the Peoples Republic of China as Chinese. This might be one of the oldest stupid arguments on the internet -- it certainly was common on Usenet > 20 years ago.

Re:From my experience...

[Bromskloss]

It's not a textbook; it assumes you basically know the math

That applies to every math book out there.

No, there is at least one mathematics book for which the statement does not hold. I don't have a constructive proof for this my claim, though, so I can't give you an example.

Re:Useless.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Yes, you can derive all of mathematics from a fairly small set of axioms every time you want to do something. The point of having a reference handy is that you don't have to. You see, in the modern world we have this thing called a "body of knowledge," the idea being that smart people can do new work which builds on the previous work of other smart people. It's been quite a successful approach so far; perhaps you should give it a try?