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## Thursday, March 3, 2011

### M373 applied to computer games

The fact that computer games are computationally intensive forces game programmers to invent tricks to do their calculations in a minimal number of steps. A typical M373 optimization problem. It is much faster to calculate $\frac{1}{\sqrt{x}}$ using Newton approximation.

From the source code of Quake.
float InvSqrt(float x){
float xhalf = 0.5f * x;
int i = *(int*)&x; // store floating-point bits in integer
i = 0x5f3759d5 - (i >> 1); // initial guess for Newton's method
x = *(float*)&i; // convert new bits into float
x = x*(1.5f - xhalf*x*x); // One round of Newton's method
return x;
}

Link: Understanding Quake's fast inverse-square-root

## Welcome to The Bridge

Mathematics: is it the fabric of MEST?
This is my voyage
My continuous mission
To uncover hidden structures
To create new theorems and proofs
To boldly go where no man has gone before

(Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion, colloquially aka Raumpatrouille Orion was the first German science fiction television series. Its seven episodes were broadcast by ARD beginning September 17, 1966. The series has since acquired cult status in Germany. Broadcast six years before Star Trek first aired in West Germany (in 1972), it became a huge success.)