RAYMOND'S

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PERSONAL BACKGROUND

EDUCATION: B.Sc. (Chemistry) from Université de Montréal in 1957

AGE: You will not need a Ph.D. in Maths to figure out that I am not a youngster anymore.

LANGUAGES: French, English

MARITAL STATUS: Still happily married to the same enduring woman since July 4, 1959, four children, ten grandchildren the oldest being already 28 years old.

OCCUPATION: Enjoying every day of my deserved retirement after 30 years of enjoyable service with the same company.

1st COMPUTER PROGRAM: Written in FORTRAN in 1968 to be saved on, and loaded from, punched tape for use on a time share terminal.

1st COMPUTER: TRS-80 purchased in a garage sale in 1985 and equipped with 64K expansion interface, four single-sided floppy drives, a slotted table, and a TTX printer with its stand. Price: $500. Imagine what you can get today for the same price in 1985 dollars!

MAIN HOBBY: Assembly programming, primarily that which requires math skills.

OTHER INTERESTS: Occasional golf, 10-pin bowling, tennis, curling (one month per year), wood working.


ARE YOU INTERESTED IN HIGH PRECISION COMPUTATION?

Do YOU want to learn how to use FPU instructions?


See this section

F P U    T U T O R I A L


But NOT interested in learning how to use FPU instructions?


See this section

F P U L I B


After you gain some experience with the FPU, you may eventually want to start using

C O M P L E X    N U M B E R S

That section gives a very brief introduction to the subject of complex numbers. Some knowledge of geometry and trigonometry is preferable to fully understand that subject.

A library of functions related to complex numbers is made available for download to get you started. The package contains the library, the source code of each module, a Help file, and a test dialog box to show the result of each function based on user input.


Occasionally, you may need to perform computations with slightly more precision than with only integers, but without using the FPU. You may then want to consider

F I X E D    P O I N T    M A T H


You may also want to play with large numbers which would exceed the range and/or accuracy of computations with the usual CPU or FPU registers (such as computing the square root of a number with an accuracy of 1000 decimal places). You may then consider the use of:

BINARY   CODED   DECIMALS


Any suggestion or comment is welcome.

S.V.P. insert the word FPU on the subject line to help me retrieve your communication from the junk mail. Otherwise, I cannot guarantee an answer.

Last updated: May 14, 2011