One mathematician even went so far as to say that if he was stranded on an island and had the choice of only one book, he'd take A&S.
----- Original Message ----- From: Ian Clark <earthspo...@googlemail.com> Date: Sunday, November 15, 2009 15:38 Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] APWJ Obscure reference To: Programming forum <programming@jsoftware.com> > Right, I've learned something! And I thought I was a mathematician... > > I wonder how well-known A&S is in Europe? My contemporaries > would have > turned to Rektorys "Survey of Applicable Mathematics". But I'm talking > 1960s - 70s now... > > Ian > > > > On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 10:59 PM, Sherlock, Ric > <r.g.sherl...@massey.ac.nz> wrote: > >> From: Dan Bron > >> > >> > Could somebody please tell me > >> > what "A&S 26.2.16" means? > >> > >> A&S is Abramowitz and Stegun, a mathematical reference. It > is a > >> collection of common/useful mathematical formulae, and > 26.2.16 is one > >> of those formulae. > >> > >> BTW, I am not a mathematician, so I don't know how familiar > the work is > >> in that community, but it certainly gets a lot of citations > in the J > >> Forum and the APL community generally (and Ken and Roger's > posts/papers>> in particular, in my experience). > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abramowitz_and_Stegun > > The Wikipedia entry for the book provides some of that context: > > > > "The Handbook is likely the most widely distributed and most > cited NIST technical publication of all time. Government sales > exceed 150,000 copies, and an estimated three times as many have > been reprinted and sold by commercial publishers since 1965. > During the mid-1990s, the book was cited every 1.5 hours of each > working day. And its influence will persist as it is currently > being updated in digital format by NIST." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
