WMU News

Numerical Analysis expert to be visiting scholar

Oct. 9, 1997

KALAMAZOO -- Dr. G.W. Stewart, a leading expert in numerical analysis, will present two lectures at Western Michigan University Thursday and Friday, Oct. 23-24, as part of its Visiting Scholars and Artists Program.

Both talks will begin at 4 p.m. in the Alavi Commons Room on the sixth floor of Everett Tower.

Stewart, a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland at College Park, will speak on "Updating and Downdating" on Thursday. The talk will provide an overview of the challenge of recomputing the solution to a matrix problem after the addition or deletion of data. The first instance of this method dates back to the 1820s, when German mathematician and astronomer Karl Gauss used it to calculate planetary and cometary orbits. Today, extensions of this idea have enabled people to perform calculations that would otherwise be unthinkable -- even on the fastest computers.

His second lecture on Friday, "A New Rank Revealing Decomposition," will be part of the Fourth Symposium on Matrix Analysis and Applications taking place at WMU Oct. 24-25.

Stewart's lectures at WMU are being sponsored in part by the College of Arts and Sciences and Department of Mathematics and Statistics. For more information, persons may contact Dr. Niloufer Mackey in the department at 387-4594.

The Visiting Scholars and Artists Program was established in 1960 and has supported some 500 visits by scholars and artists representing more than 65 academic disciplines. The chairperson of the committee that oversees the program is Dr. Linda L. Dannison, chairperson of the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences.


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