What Can Go Wrong in Computation -- and clues for getting around

Dr. Zeke Zeng

Department of Mathematics

Northeastern Illinois University

How much can you trust your computer? You may be amused, or even shocked, by its betrayal. As this talk will demonstrate, our technology may not be up to the task even for some seemingly simple and harmless computations like evaluating a function, solving a linear system, or dividing a polynomial. Worse yet, Bill Gates is not responsible and probably never will be. It is a challenge to educated computer users, particularly mathematicians, to be alert and to come up with solutions.