Robert Dougherty-Bliss — Expensive Computations
May 2, 2025, 2:00pm in Hill 423
Speaker: Robert Dougherty-Bliss
Abstract: The Fibonacci numbers (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, ...) are defined by
F(0) = 0
F(1) = 1
F(n) = F(n - 1) + F(n - 2), n >= 2.
In theory this tells you everything about them. In practice, many questions are computationally infeasible without being smarter. For example, what are the ten most significant digits of F(2¹⁰⁰⁰)? I'll show you some unexpected places that computations get expensive (sequences, polynomials, summation), and what to do about it.
