graphics, and data management software package available for personal computers. It
allows the desktop computer user to get the quality of results once reserved for users
of mainframe computers. The SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) is
also a popular software package for performing statistical analyses. It enables the user
to summarize data, determine if there are significant differences between groups,
examine relationships among all the variables, and even graph the results.
To date, what computerhas the top speedin operations per second?
In the 2004 TOP500 list—a ranking of supercomputers by speed, with the results
announced early each summer—the top three supercomputers were as follows (note:
a teraflop is a measure of a computer’s performance, in which one teraflop is 10^12
operations per second):
- IBM’s BlueGene/L—70.72 teraflops
- NASA’s Columbia—51.87 teraflops
- NEC’s Earth Simulator—35.86 teraflops
One of the next contenders is Sandia Lab’s Red Storm, with 41.5 teraflops. This
list will continue to change each year as more advanced technology becomes available.
In actuality, the fastest computer in the world is the human brain, an amazing
computing device with the best processor on Earth. To compare, the fastest comput-
ers measure speed in trillions of operations per second, but scientists speculate the
brain can handle 10 quadrillion operations per second. The actual numbers are proba-
bly even higher than that.
369
MATH IN COMPUTING
How is mathematics used by search engines
on the World Wide Web (WWW)?A
search engine is a program that searches for Internet documents (usually on
the World Wide Web) using certain keywords. It then returns a list of results
in which those keywords are found. Search engines such as Google, Alta Vista, and
Excite are a general class of programs that use a proprietary search algorithm;
they rely on probability, linear algebra, and graph theory to create a list that, ideal-
ly, produces the most relevant Web site results for the user.