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 August

Date: August 9, 2000

    Dr. Heath and I met today to discuss the initial direction for our work on this project. We decided that it would be beneficial for us to start this project by creating examples to illustrate different levels of finite precision in floating point arithemetic. We are now developing a web-based calculator, which operates using a level of precision specified by the user. This will benefit learners by making it easier for them to work through problems with different precision requirements faster. Our second activity that we are developing is to transform the radius of the earth example 1.19 from Dr. Heath's book to the web.

 

Date: August 16, 2000

    Today, Dr. Heath and I, met to review our progress from the previous week. The arbitrary precision calculator is well underway, and Dr. Heath is planning to offer it to the students of his class. There it will be tested and used to help students work through floating point arithemetic precision problems. Until then, this weeks focus will be to polish off the calculator applet and to become familiar with running the Earth example in Matlab.

 

Date: August 23, 2000

    This weeks meeting consisted mostly of mapping out the details for our next java activity. This new activity will be a web version of the Matlab Earth Example previously mentioned. It will illustrate the effects and relationships resulting from rounding error and truncation error.

    The arbitrary precision calculator is now completely functional and it will be made available for CS 350 students to use and test by the end of the week.

 

Date: August 30, 2000

    Today, the arbitrary precision calculator has been deployed in a classroom.
    The web version of the Earth example is still coming along. Most of the user interface has been completed. Dr. Heath and I have planned out further web activities taken from exercises in his text book. Among these activities are exercises involving rounding rules, summing of a series, and a graphical display of floating point systems. This week I will be focusing my work on creating a rounding rules java applet and furthering the development of the Earth Demo.