The National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST) has released the Digital Library of
Mathematical Functions (DLMF) and its printed companion, the NIST
Handbook of Mathematical Functions, the much-anticipated successors
to the agency’s most widely cited publication of all time. These
reference works contain a comprehensive set of tools useful for
specialists who work with mathematical modeling and computation.
The two works comprise a complete update and
expansion of the 1964 Handbook of Mathematical Functions,
which upon its publication quickly became an indispensable reference for
scientists and engineers who use the tools of applied mathematics. NIST
embarked on the new work in response to the Internet revolution in
information exchange as well as advances in mathematics itself.
The new 36-chapter tome is designed to be
the definitive reference work on “special functions,” which are the most
important and widely employed tools in applied mathematics. Special
functions appear whenever natural phenomena are studied, engineering
problems are formulated, and computer simulations are performed. They
also crop up in statistics, financial models and economic analysis.
The new work differs from the 1964
publication in that it now includes information about additional special
functions that have recently come to prominence in several scientific
and technical fields. Perhaps the greatest difference, however, is its
transformation into a Web-based resource.
The DLMF, freely available on the Web,
includes visual aids to provide qualitative information on the behavior
of mathematical functions, including interactive tools for rotating and
zooming in on three-dimensional representations. These visualizations
can be explored with free browsers and plugins for PC, Mac and Linux
systems. It also provides references to or hints for the proofs of all
mathematical statements, offers advice on methods for computing
mathematical functions, and provides active links to available software
and references. With more than 8,000 equations and nearly 500 figures,
the DLMF has about twice the amount of technical material of
the 1964 publication.
“This is a much more complete package for
the user,” says NIST’s Dan Lozier, one of the works’ editors. “We
anticipate the DLMF to be a useful resource for everyone who has
benefited from the 1964 publication and expect that it will find new
audiences among biologists, data security specialists and every other
branch of science that employs computer-based models.”
The DLMF is available at http://dlmf.nist.gov/. Its 967-page
printed companion, the NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions (ISBN
9780521192255) is published by Cambridge University Press.
For more details, see the NIST news
announcement, "NIST Releases Successor to Venerable Handbook of Math
Functions" at http://www.nist.gov/itl/math/math_051110.cfm.
Media Contact: Chad Boutin, boutin@nist.gov, (301) 975-4261
