Mathematically Equivalent, Computationally Non-equivalent Formulas and Software Comprehensibility.

摘要

In the development of mathematical software, often the formula that defines the mathematical purpose of the software is not used directly in the software. The computational algorithm used is often mathematically equivalent to the defining formula, but bears little resemblance to it for computational reasons. Therefore, although the flow of control of the coded algorithm may be visible to a maintenance programmer, comprehending and maintaining the code effectively may still be difficult if only the formula that defines the purpose of the code is provided as documentation. In this memorandum, we provide some examples of this consequence of transforming the mathematical definition of a computation into a coded algorithm.