Some Computational Patterns

In this post we'll look at three computational algorithms: Dense linear algebra, graph algorithms and monte carlo.

The Dense Linear algebra pattern was new to me. I have (unfortunately) not had the opportunity to take linear algebra, but I could still understand the pattern and see when you would need it. I thought the write up for this pattern did the best job of illustrating points with pictures than the others that have been looked at.

The Graph Algorithms pattern I thought tried to do too much. I have fairly good background in graph theory and algorithms, so none of the algorithms were new to me. The authors did do a good job of pointing out the parallel opportunities available in each algorithm, but didn't include this on all of them. There are so many graph based algorithms that only some of them could be highlighted, meaning the treatment of each one was rather short. More detail would be useful in several cases.

The Monte Carlo pattern is a statistical pattern that I have seen described once before. The writeup made sense and I could understand it.