NADAs Begravning Firas Stort på KTH

KTH inbjuder till firande av NADAs 50-årsdag enligt nedanstående affisch. Vad som inte omnämns i inbjudan är att NADA är nedlagt och inte längre finns med oss: Att det handlar om en begravning av något dött och inte ett födelsdagsfirande av något levande. Att Numerisk Analys (NA) inte längre är en egen institution utan har inlemmats i Matematik och nu går samma öde till mötes som Numerisk Analys vid Chalmers, som inte längre är ett undervisningsämne och därmed förlorat sin uppgift. Så motsvarar då NADA till slut sin betydelse på portugisiska, nämligen "ingenting", "nothing".

Att Numerisk Analys har gått i graven beror inte på att ämnet saknar aktualitet, hela vårt IT-samhälle bygger ju på Numerisk Analys i olika former, utan på att NADA stelnat i den form och med det innehåll NADA hade under pionjärtiden för 50 år sedan. Så kan framgång byggd på initiell kompetens och efterfrågan (jfr med Nokia) utvecklas till en tvångströja som kväver nytänkande och utveckling och därmed bäddar för undergång.  I inbjudan omskrivs detta som "lite nostalgi" och firandet fokuseras på "musik och sång" och "Demonstration av Historisk Klenod", kanske bysten av Germund Dahlquist, grundaren av NADA (en mycket sympatisk person som både kunde räkna och spela piano):

Guldjubiléum

Informationsbehandling 1963 Numerisk Analys - Datalogi

Tid: Ti 2013-12-17 kl 13.30

Plats: E1 och Sing-Sing

För 50 år sedan installerades på KTH den första professorn i Informationsbehandling, särskilt Numerisk Analys, och institutionen grundades. Tisdag 17 december blir det tillfälle för oss på CSC och NA att fira.

Preliminärt program från kl. 13.30 (Obs!) i sal E1:

• Presentationer, framtidsorienterade och blandade med lite nostalgi av bland andra
Anna-Karin Tornberg, Anders Flodström, Jan Gulliksen, Ingrid Melinder, Bertil Gustafsson & Björn Engquist, Haibo Li & Kia Höök & Ylva Fernaeus, Patrik Fältström & Anders Hillbo, Johan Hoffman, Svante Littmarck, Leo Giertz, Jin Moen & Marie Björkman, Yngve Sundblad & Peter Graham

• Jubileumspublikationer

• Demonstration av historisk klenod

• Avslutande middag med musik och sång
c:a kl.18.30 i Sing-Sing

Inbjudan:

Alla på CSC och NA är inbjudna.
Övriga deltagare efter särskild inbjudan.

Anmälan:

till Ann-Britt Isaksson Öhman senast den 29 november. (ange om du är med också på middagen)

Festkommittén
Lennart Edsberg, Ingrid Melinder, Yngve Sundblad

The Death of Numerical Analysis

Archimedes 212 BC: Don't disturb my circles.

When I started my studies in the mid 1960's, Numerical Analysis NA was emerging as a new academic discipline developed by mathematicians attracted by the new capabilities of the electronic computer.

New departments of NA were formed outside departments of mathematics, as NADA at KTH by Germund Dahlquist, at Chalmers by Heinz-Otto Kreiss followed by Owe Axelsson, and in Uppsala again by Kreiss, while my former supervisor Vidar Thomee introduced mathematical NA at the mathematics department at Chalmers.

NA boomed and gave birth to new departments of computer science.

After finishing my Ph D with Vidar Thomee at the mathematics department and a post doc at the University of Chicago, I joined NA at Chalmers and when Owe Axelsson left in 1981 I had the chance to take over after him, but also a chance to return to the math department. I chose math and Axel Ruhe took over NA.

In the early 1990s NA was incorporated by math at Chalmers and when Axel Ruhe left Chalmers 10 years later, the life of NA at Chalmers was over. Today only a few residues of NA remain, and NA courses are no longer taught; they were simply assimilated into math courses without leaving any trace since the math courses are the same as before the computer. NA was born from math into a life outside math and now returned to math to die, as if nothing ever happened.

The development is similar at other universities in Sweden: NA first boomed but then lost momentum as we entered into the information age of 21st century ultimately based on NA.

It seemed as if NA became so widely used that there was no longer any need for any NA education.

The pillar of the old NA empire, NADA at KTH, is now meeting the same fate by being moved from its home at computer science to a mathematics department untouched by the computer.

Dahlquist managed to keep NADA outside mathematics, which allowed NADA to grow but when Dahlquist passed away the momentum was lost, and when now NA is being captured by mathematics, it has to face the same reality as NA at Chalmers (and Lund, Linköping, Umeå...).

The same is happening at the University of Chicago, where NA flourished within the math department in the 1970-80s under Jim Douglas Jr and Todd Dupont, while today NA faces extinction within computer science and math is again pure math without any NA.

Why is then NA dying when information science based on NA (like Googles search engine, imaging, simulation) is rocketing to the sky? If it is not eaten by math, computer science cleans the table.

When I look at the NA courses of today at NADA I see courses which are basically the same as those I met as an undergraduate almost 50 years ago: a bit of interpolation, Dahlquist stability and Gaussian elimination.

I see a petrified NA which is no longer fit for survival in the fierce competition of resources and students at the university of today, between math and computer science.

Old NA is dead and New NA is jet to be born, outside or inside mathematics departments.

Mathematics departments are in desperate need of revitalization by computational mathematics, but it seems that this hole cannot be filled with Old NA.

What may then New NA be? My (partial) answer is Mathematical Simulation Technology, but there are many other (possible) answers...

Test: Alive or Dead?

NA at KTH is in charge of the new Bachelors program in Simulation Technology scheduled to start in the Fall. This week NA will decide if this plan will be followed or the if the program will be shut down. Application opens March 15 and ends April 15. No publicity for the program has been made since the first announcement on Dec 1, 2011.

If NA is capable of upgrading to meet the requirements of the new program, then NA still has some life.

If NA decides to shut down the program, then NA is already dead.

I will report on the status as soon as the decision is made public.