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Comment by pletnes | Hacker News Reader

I always had the impression that NR was about getting a broad overview of the field. I imagine each chapter covers at least a whole field of numerical research. If you’re working on applications of numerics, it is indeed important to know what’s available out there. The NR code itself I’ve never used, really.

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It's more of an intro level book, aimed at scientists rather than numerics geeks or or people into theoretical math. So it does a good job of presenting things simply and in ways that don't require navigating too many fine points. That approach mostly works, though it leaves openings for things to go wrong. The topics (root finding, integration, etc.) are similar to what you'd see in an undergrad numerics course. It specifically doesn't have anything about PDE's, since it defines that as the boundary between introductory and advanced topics.

FWIW, there is a whole chapter (17 in the first edition, 20 in the third/current edition, don’t have a second edition in front of me but would be surprised if it didn’t have one) on Partial Differential Equations. It’s about 50+ pages in the first edition and 70+ in the third.

But I take your point, the chapter does admit to being intended as “the briefest possible useful introduction” and notes that the topic would require another volume entirely dedicated to it.

Ah thanks, I must have mis-remembered. I think it did say something about PDE's being the dividing line though.

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