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Comment on Multipole Methods for the Masses

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Seeing this reminds me that, in 2000, the IEEE put together a list of what they considered the 10 most important algorithms of the 20th century [1]. The fast multipole method was one of them, along with the obvious heavy-hitters of FFT, quicksort, Metropolis-Hastings, and simplex.

[1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=814...

Thanks for sharing that list. Is there a good reference that lucidly explains the basics of all (or most of) those algorithms? IMHO readable pseudocode would also be helpful.

Good list, the QR algorithm is particularly beautiful I think.

Personally, I think it's too oriented towards numerical algorithms. I'd drop the integer relation detection for RSA or maybe Diffie-Hellman as the most important cryptographic developments in the 20th century.

DH feels more important there.

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