[ut.na] NA Digest Volume 89 : Issue 26

krj@na.toronto.edu (Ken Jackson) (07/10/89)

NA Digest   Sunday, July 9, 1989   Volume 89 : Issue 26

Today's Editor: Cleve Moler

Today's Topics:

     SIAM Conference on Geometric Design
     Argonne Summer Institute in Parallel Processing
     NAG's Multigrid Routine
     max x'Ax+b'x
     Colloquium on Applications of Mathematics in Hamburg
     Updates to NA-NET Mailing List
     New Position for Dongarra
     Fellowship at John von Neumann Supercomputer Center
     NAG Optimization with Discontinuous Derivatives
     Scaling of Condition Number with Resolution
     Professorship in Norway
     Address Change for Arnold Neumaier

-------------------------------------------------------

From: Michelle Jones <SIAM@wharton.upenn.edu>
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 89 14:42 EDT
Subject: SIAM Conference on Geometric Design

TO:         NA NET

FROM:       Michelle Jones, Marketing Manager, SIAM

SUBJECT:    Announcement -- SIAM Conference on Geometric Design

DATE:       November 6-10, 1989

TITLE:      SIAM Conference on Geometric Design

ORGANIZER:  Robert E. Barnhill
               Arizona State University

PLACE:      Sheraton Mission Palms Hotel
               Tempe, Arizona
        
TOPICS:     Teleological modeling, computer graphics, parametric curves
               and surfaces in CAGD, images of matrices, domain processing
               and manipulation, surface fitting and other related subjects.

INVITED SPEAKERS:
            Alan Barr, California Institute of Technology, Teleological
               modeling: A New Approach for Representing Objects
            Philip J. Davis, Brown University, The Decline and Renaissanc
               of Geometry
            Rida Farouki, IBM, Numerical Stability of Geometric Algorithms
               and Representations
            David Gossard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Geometry
               in Conceptual Design
            Gerald Farin, Arizona State University, NURBS: Theoretical and
               Practical Issues
            John Gregory, Brunel University, Parametric Curves and Surfaces
               in Computer-Aided Geometric Design
            Cleve Moler, Ardent Computer Corporation, Images of Matrices --
               Mathematical Visualization
            John Rice, Purdue University, Using Domain Processing for 
               Solid Modeling
            Tom Sederberg, Brigham Young University, Algorithms for 
               Computing Intersections of Parametric Surface
            Peter Wilson, Rensselaer Design Research Center, Geometric 
               Aspects of PDEs
            Mike Wozny, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Visualization?
               Or Merely Geometry and Computer Graphics.

CONTACT:    SIAM Conference Coordinator
               117 S. 17th Street, 14th Floor
               Philadelphia, PA  19103-5052  USA
               215-564-2929
               (FAX) 215-564-4174
               E-Mail: siam@wharton.upenn.edu


------------------------------

From: Jack Dongarra <dongarra@antares.mcs.anl.gov>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 89 10:31:20 CDT
Subject: Argonne Summer Institute in Parallel Processing

               SUMMER INSTITUTE IN PARALLEL COMPUTING

    A Two-Week Institute at the Advanced Computing Research Facility
             Mathematics and Computer Science Division
                    Argonne National Laboratory

                       September 5-15, 1989
 
Summer Institute Faculty              Computer Facilities

Don Austin, DOE                       ALLIANT FX/8 (8 processors)
Mani Chandy, CALTECH                  AMT DAP (1024 processors)
Tom DeFanti, U. OF ILLINOIS, CHICAGO  ARDENT Titan (4 processors)
David Gelernter, YALE UNIVERSITY      BBN Butterfly GP1000 (96 processors)
John Gurd, UNIV. OF MANCHESTER, U.K.  BBN Butterfly II (45 processors)
Ken Kennedy, RICE UNIVERSITY          ENCORE MULTIMAX (20 processors)
Alex Nicholau, U.. OF CALIF.,IRVINE   INTEL iPSC HYPERCUBE (32 processors)
Burton Smith, TERA COMPUTER           INTEL iPSC HYPERCUBE (16 processors,
Guy Steele, THINKING MACHINES             with vector capability)
ARGONNE STAFF                         SEQUENT BALANCE (24 processors)
                                      STELLAR GS1000
                                      THINKING MACHINES CM-2 (16,384 processors)
Eligibility and Selection Criteria:
   Institute limited to 25 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.
   Preference given to those likely to advance parallel computing research.
   Only one person from the same institution and department accepted.
   Applications due July 15, 1989, supported by a letter of recommendation.

    Note:   Participants  will  receive  free  lodging  for
    September  5-15  and a stipend for meals and incidental
    expenses.  Travel costs will be reimbursed up to $750.

For further information, write or call:
Teri Huml
Mathematics and Computer Science Division
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne, Illinois  60439-4844
312-972-7163
huml@mcs.anl.gov

The Institute is  supported  by  the  National  Science
Foundation  Science  and Technology Center for Research
on Parallel Computing and by  the  U.S.  Department  of
Energy


------------------------------

From: Wlodek Proskurowski <proskuro%castor.usc.edu@usc.edu>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1989 12:25:37 PDT
Subject: NAG's Multigrid Routine

This spring I gave the following problem as a part of the take home quiz to
my graduate class in numerical PDEs:
	The NAG software package contains a multigrid routine (D03EEF) for 
solving general 2nd order elliptic PDEs on rectangular regions.  It has two 
options for approximating first derivatives by using a) central, or b) forward
differences.  The following test example (from p.8 of the Mark 13 Release 
NAG Manual) was run on the SUN computer in double precision:
		-Du+100(u_x+u_y)=f  in [0,1]^2		with
Dirichlet boundary conditions corresponding to the exact solution u=x^2+y^2.
Here D denotes the Laplacian, and u_x partial wrt x. The obtained results were:

# of levels	# of iterations		  ||erorr||_2
		a)	   b)		  a)	     b)
   3		33	   7		5e-11	   4.0e-2
   4		14	   8		3e-12	   1.6e-2
   5		9	   8		7e-13	   3.0e-3

Explain the behavior of the rate of convergence and the error as a function of
N=2^(#of levels) in both cases.  Why such extreme differences in the results
occur (note that the method is implemented correctly and there are no bugs
in the program)?


Comments and questions to NAG.

1. Only the result for 3 levels is given in the manual.  Moreover, given there
  are actually squares of the 2-norm (additionally, without normalization), so 
  the numbers read: a) 1.7e-19 and b) 1.28e-1.
2. Who cursorily looking at these rusults would want to use the routine: one 
  option is super accurate but extremely expensive, the other fast but gives
  practically no useful information (compare with the norm of the solution!)
3. I hope you want NAG to be used not only by numerical analysts who have time
  to invest (or students to do the work) to find out that the routine works 
  well only the test example is ill chosen, especially in the complete absence 
  of proper explanations.


------------------------------

From: John Conroy <conroy@super.org>
Date: 30 Jun 89 22:43:19 GMT
Subject: max x'Ax+b'x

I am interested in solving the following problem:

    max x'Ax+b'x
    ||x||2=1

where A is a symmetric n by n matrix and || ||2 is the 2-norm.

When b=0, the solution is simply the eigenvector corresponding to the
maximal eigenvalue.   If the 2-norm is replaced with linear constraints
and/or equalities, its a quadratic programming problem.
However, as stated above the best I know is to attack it as a
non-linear constrained optimization problem, which seems like overkill to
me.   Any pointers or suggestions?

   John Conroy
   Supercomputing Research Center, Lanham, MD


------------------------------

From: Bernd Fischer <fischer@na-net.stanford.edu>
Date: Wed, 5 Jul 89 12:23:16 PDT
Subject: Colloquium on Applications of Mathematics in Hamburg

              First Announcement
                International
    Colloquium on Applications of Mathematics
             on July 6 and 7, 1990
                  in Hamburg

The Institute of Applied Mathematics of the University of Hamburg
will hold an international
    Colloquium on Applications of Mathematics
on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Lothar COLLATZ.
Invitations for a main lecture have been accepted by: Ph. Ciarlet
(Paris), D. Gaier(Giessen) R. B. Guenther(Corvallis),
W. C. Rheinboldt(Pittsburgh).
Short lectures (ca. 15 minutes duration) connected with the topic
of the Colloquium are welcome from everybody interested, subject
to space and time restrictions.
Participants from East and Southeast Europe con possibly be given
some support for local expenses.
Those who may wish to participate in the above mentioned Colloquium
and want to receive further information are requested to send a note
as soon as possible, but not later than
                  December 15, 1989
to
       University of Hamburg
       Institute of Applied Mathematics
       Bundesstrasse 55
       D-2000 Hamburg 13
       West Germany


------------------------------

From: Mark Kent <kent@na-net.stanford.edu>
Date: Thu, 6 Jul 89 09:22:26 PDT
Subject: Updates to NA-NET Mailing List

Updates to the NA-NET mailing list are as follows.

Changes:

 randolph bank		to	rbank@ucsd.edu
 petter bjorstad	to	petter@eik.ii.uib.no
 theodorus dekker	to	dirk@fwi.uva.nl
 eva edberg		to	evaedb%folke.se@majestix.ida.liu.se
 sylvan elhay		to	elhay@cs.ua.oz.au
 john gilbert		to	john@eik.ii.uib.no
 ivan graham		to	igg@maths.bath.ac.uk
 malvin kalos		to	kalos@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu
 jerry kautsky		to	j.kautsky@research.cc.flinders.oz.au
 richard liu		to	liu@mssun7.msi.cornell.edu
 paul muir		to	muir@husky1.stmarys.ca
 roy nicolaides		to	rn0m@andrew.cmu.edu
 takashi nodera		to	nodera@math.keio.ac.jp
 yoshio oyanagi		to	oyanagi@is.tsukuba.ac.jp
 louise perkins		to	perkins@lll-crg.llnl.gov
 david ryan		to	dmryan@cs.cornell.edu
 alastair spence	to	as@maths.bath.ac.uk
 grace wahba		to	wahba@stat.wisc.edu
 pieter wesseling	to	piet%dutinfh@uunet.uu.net
 hongyuan zha		to	prlb2!kulcs!kulesat!zha@uunet.uu.net

New entries:

roberto ansaloni	acray2%icineca2.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu
jarle berntsen		jarle@eik.ii.uib.no
margaret cheney		cheneym@turing.cs.rpi.edu
shenaz choudhury	sc7@vms.cis.pittsburgh.edu
brian coomes		coomes%csfsa.cs.umn.edu@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
tim davis		davis@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu
peter derijk		actrijp@hutruu0.bitnet@xxx
julio dix		jd01%swtexas.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu
david dobson		dobson@rice.edu
henry ellingworth	himen%ecs.oxford.ac.uk
raffael eperego		perego%icnucevm.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu
stein eriksen		stein@eik.ii.uib.no
jesper fabricius	unijf%neuvm1.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu
anders forsgren		andersf@math.kth.se
marco frontini		marfro@ipmma1.polimi.it
albert gilg		zeus@ztivax.siemens.com
linitial ginitial	lg04c7%swtexas.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu
walter hoffman		walter@fwi.uva.nl
doug james		doug@mathel.ncsu.edu
tom kirke		u15305%uicvm.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu
jian le			jian@eeg.com
rob leland		leland%na.oxford.ac.uk
alain leroux		leroux%frbdx11.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu
fx litt			litt%bliulg11.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu
christian lubich	c80427%ainuni01.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu
herbert muthsam		a8131daa%awiuni11.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu
marcus naraidoo		ma_mn@cms.bristol.ac.uk
makoto natori		natori%gama.is.tsukuba.junet@relay.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp
lois petherick		lmp%myrias.uucp@relay.cs.net
pia pfluger		pia@fwi.uva.nl
shirley pomeranz	pomeranz@tusun2.knet.utulsa.edu
ekkehard sachs		tfb403%dkluni01.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu
antonia vecchio		iam@areana.na.cnr.it
david watkins		watkins%wsumath.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu
harry yserentant	uma005%ddohrz11.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu

  - Mark


------------------------------

From: Jack Dongarra <dongarra@antares.mcs.anl.gov>
Date: Thu, 6 Jul 89 17:25:21 CDT
Subject: New Position for Dongarra

After a rewarding 16 year association with Argonne National Laboratory
I have accepted a position at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge
National Laboratory as a professor in the Computer Science Department 
and a member of the Mathematical Science group at Oak Ridge. 
I will move from Illinois to Tennessee during the first week of September.

I look forward to the challenges and opportunities of this new position
as well as my continued involvement with such projects as LAPACK, netlib,
the "LINPACK Benchmark" and others from Tennessee.

Jack Dongarra


------------------------------

From: Hilde Devoghel <hilde@na-net.stanford.edu>
Date: Thu, 6 Jul 89 16:32:39 PDT
Subject: Fellowship at John von Neumann Supercomputer Center
 
 Postdoctoral fellowship for 1989-1990 at John von Neumann National
 Supercomputer Center, PO Box 3717, Princeton, NJ 08543, in NSF funded
 project involving special functions of mathematical physics,
 acceleration techniques for slowly convergent series, numerical
 quadrature and multivariate interpolation, in a supercomputing environment.
 
 Contact: Professor Michael P. Barnett at JvNC, bitnet address MBARNETT@JVNCD.


------------------------------

From: Philip Gill <SVEN%vax.num-alg-grp.co.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 7 Jul 89  15:00 GMT
Subject: NAG Optimization with Discontinuous Derivatives

The last NA-Net distribution contained a message from
DeKnuydt and Smolders concerning the use of the Nag library to
minimize the function:
                    
function_result =  -  SUM    [N(i)/N] * blog [(N(i)/N)]
                   all i with 
                   N(i) <>  0 
where
N(i)   =   number of occurrences of value i
N      =   total number of occurrences.

The Nag routines  E04JAF,  E04JBF  and  E04VCF  discussed by
DeKnuydt and Smolders are designed for smooth nonlinear
optimization---i.e., they can be expected to work only when the
first and second derivatives of the objective function exist and
are continuous.  The problem described above does not fall into
this category.  The NAG routine E04CCF, based on the Nelder and
Mead polytope method, is intended for problems whose derivatives
are  discontinuous. 

Philip Gill
Mathematics Department, UCSD.


------------------------------

From: Henry Greenside <romeo!hsg@cs.duke.edu>
Date: 7 Jul 89 18:46:25 GMT
Subject: Scaling of Condition Number with Resolution

Can people suggest any references or proofs about the
relationship between the condition number of a matrix
obtained by discretizing an elliptic pde and the order
of accuracy of the discretization?

It seems commonly known that second-order accurate
finite difference approximations to elliptic operators,
e.g., (d^2 f(x) / Dx^2), lead to matrices with
condition numbers that scale as nx^2, i.e.,
quadratically with the number of uniform mesh points.
Similarly, it seems well known that matrices arising
from Chebyshev spectral expansions of such operators
scale as nx^4, as a fourth power.

Have analyses been made about how general this
is, e.g., for more general operators:
   d/dx( a(x) df(x)/dx )
or how boundary conditions affect this scaling?
If there is interest, I will summarize replies
to the net.


------------------------------

From: Petter Bjorstad <petter@eik.II.UIB.NO>
Date: Sat, 8 Jul 89 17:47:05 +0200
Subject: Professorship in Norway

Professor in Computer Science

The Department of Computer Science, University of Bergen
requests applications for
a tenured position as Full Professor of Computer Science,
(Scientific Computing / Optimization)
for immediate consideration.

The department has 12 full time faculty members (6 full professors
and 6 associate positions), 2 adjoint (part-time) professors, 
14 research fellowships (Ph.D. students).
and 45 Master degree students.

The department gives courses for undergraduate as well as
graduate studies. There are two main directions of study
at the advanced level, {computer science} and {scientific computing,
(numerical analysis
and optimization)}.
This position will have a special responsibility within the
"Scientific Computing" direction  of study.

All faculty members have state of art workstations (SUN-3 or newer), the
computing environment is based on an ethernet network directly
connected to the
international Internet (ARPA-Net). The department has created
a laboratory for parallel processing (Alliant FX/8 and Intel Hypercubes)
jointly with the CMI research institute, and also a laboratory for AI research.
The department moved into a new building (The High-Tech Center
of Bergen) in the spring of 1989. Several other computer science
related research groups, including IBMs Scientific Center are
located in the same building.

The Department conducts research in the following areas:
In computer science:
Analysis of Algorithms, Datacommunication and Coding Theory,
Artificial Intelligence, Programming Development (Languages,
specifications, verifications and environments).
In scientific computing:
Numerical Integration, Numerical solution of Partial Differential
Equations, Accelleration of Convergence, Discrete and
Continuous Optimization.

There is a strong focus on the use of parallel computers
in all areas of research.

The department has both national and international cooperations
with research groups at other institutions
(In particular in the United States and Europe).
Locally, we cooperate with the Christian Michelsen Research
Institute and with the IBM Nergen Scientific Center.

There are also other groups within the university doing
computer science or computer science related work.
(Computer Science in Social Sciences, Computer Lingvistics and
Computer Psychology)

Prospective applicants should be able to teach
in the department,
and must have an outstanding research
record in numerical analysis/optimization.
A documented interest in aspects of such research related to
parallel computer systems will be especially welcomed.


For more information on how to apply, please drop an E-mail

note to:      petter@eik.ii.uib.no
or            na.bjorstad@na-net.stanford.edu

OR write to:   Institutt for Informatikk
               Thormohlens gate 55
               N-5008 BERGEN
               NORWAY


------------------------------

From: Arnold Neumaier <neumaier@math.wisc.edu>
Date: Sat, 8 Jul 89 16:23:40 cdt
Subject: Address Change for Arnold Neumaier

Next Tuesday I'll return to Germany. My new address is

	Prof. Dr. Arnold Neumaier
	Inst. f. Angewandte Mathematik
	Universitaet Freiburg
	Hermann-Herder-Str. 10
	D-7800 Freiburg
	West Germany

My email address is 
	
	neum%sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.dbp.de@relay.cs.net

------------------------------

End of NA Digest
**************************
-------

Reposted by

-- 
Kenneth R. Jackson,            krj@na.toronto.edu   (on Internet, CSNet, 
Computer Science Dept.,                              ARPAnet, BITNET)
University of Toronto,         krj@na.utoronto.ca   (CDNnet and other 
Toronto, Canada  M5S 1A4                             X.400 nets (Europe))
(Phone: 416-978-7075)          ...!{uunet,pyramid,watmath,ubc-cs}!utai!krj