David Harold Bailey (born 14 August 1948) is a

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

and

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

. He received his B.S. in mathematics from

Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU) is a Private education, private research university in Provo, Utah, United States. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is the flagship university of the Church Educational System sponsore ...

in 1972 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1976. He worked for 14 years as a

NASA Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

, and then from 1998 to 2013 as a Senior Scientist at the

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in the Berkeley Hills, hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established i ...

. He is now retired from the Berkeley Lab. Bailey is perhaps best known as a co-author (with

Peter Borwein Peter Benjamin Borwein (born St. Andrews, Scotland, May 10, 1953 – 23 August 2020) was a Canadian mathematician and a professor at Simon Fraser University. He is known as a co-author of the paper which presented the Bailey–Borwein–Plo ...

and

Simon Plouffe Simon Plouffe (born June 11, 1956) is a Canadian mathematician who discovered the Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula (BBP algorithm) which permits the computation of the ''n''th binary number, binary digit of pi, π, in 1995. His other 2022 formul ...

) of a 1997 paper that presented a new formula for π (pi), which had been discovered by Plouffe in 1995. This

Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula The Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula (BBP formula) is a formula for . It was discovered in 1995 by Simon Plouffe and is named after the authors of the article in which it was published, David H. Bailey, Peter Borwein, and Plouffe. The formula i ...

permits one to calculate binary or hexadecimal digits of pi beginning at an arbitrary position, by means of a simple algorithm. Subsequently, Bailey and

Richard Crandall Richard E. Crandall (December 29, 1947 – December 20, 2012) was an American physicist and computer scientist who made contributions to computational number theory. Background Crandall was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and spent two years at Calte ...

showed that the existence of this and similar formulas has implications for the long-standing question of "normality"—whether and why the digits of certain mathematical constants (including pi) appear "random" in a particular sense. Bailey was a long-time collaborator with

Jonathan Borwein Jonathan Michael Borwein (20 May 1951 – 2 August 2016) was a Scottish mathematician who held an appointment as Laureate Professor of mathematics at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He was a close associate of David H. Bailey, and they ...

(Peter's brother). They co-authored five books and over 80 technical papers on

experimental mathematics Experimental mathematics is an approach to mathematics in which computation is used to investigate mathematical objects and identify properties and patterns. It has been defined as "that branch of mathematics that concerns itself ultimately with th ...

. Bailey also does research in

numerical analysis Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to symbolic computation, symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical analysis (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). It is the study of ...

and

parallel computing Parallel computing is a type of computing, computation in which many calculations or Process (computing), processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. ...

. He has published studies on the

fast Fourier transform A fast Fourier transform (FFT) is an algorithm that computes the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of a sequence, or its inverse (IDFT). A Fourier transform converts a signal from its original domain (often time or space) to a representation in ...

(FFT), high-precision arithmetic, and the PSLQ algorithm (used for integer relation detection). He is a co-author of the NAS Benchmarks, which are used to assess and analyze the performance of parallel scientific computers. A "4-step" method of calculating the FFT is widely known as Bailey's FFT algorithm (Bailey himself credits it to W. M. Gentleman and G. Sande). He has also published articles in the area of

mathematical finance Mathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance and financial mathematics, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with mathematical modeling in the financial field. In general, there exist two separate branches of finance that req ...

, including a 2014 paper "Pseudo-mathematics and financial charlatanism," which emphasizes the dangers of statistical overfitting and other abuses of mathematics in the financial field. In 1993, Bailey received the Sidney Fernbach award from the

IEEE Computer Society IEEE Computer Society (commonly known as the Computer Society or CS) is a technical society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) dedicated to computing, namely the major areas of hardware, software, standards and people ...

, as well as the Chauvenet Prize and the Hasse Prize from the

Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary edu ...

. In 2008 he was a co-recipient of the

Gordon Bell Prize The Gordon Bell Prize is an award presented by the Association for Computing Machinery each year in conjunction with the SC Conference series (formerly known as the Supercomputing Conference). The prize recognizes outstanding achievement in hig ...

from the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

. In 2017 he was a co-recipient of the

Levi L. Conant Prize The Levi L. Conant Prize is a mathematics prize of the American Mathematical Society, which has been awarded since 2001 for outstanding expository papers published in the ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' or the ''Notices of the Ame ...

from the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

. Bailey is a member of

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Restorationism, restorationist Christianity, Christian Christian denomination, denomination and the ...

. He has positioned himself as an advocate of the teaching of science and that accepting the conclusions of modern science is not incompatible with a religious view.

Selected works

* * with Peter B. Borwein and

: * with Michał Misiurewicz: * with

, Marcos Lopez de Prado and Qiji Jim Zhu: * with

: ''Mathematics by experiment: Plausible reasoning in the 21st century'', A. K. Peters 2004, 2008 (with accompanying CD ''Experiments in Mathematics'', 2006) * with

, Neil Calkin, Roland Girgensohn, D. Russell Luke, Victor Moll: ''Experimental mathematics in action'', A. K. Peters 2007 * with

, Roland Girgensohn: ''Experimentation in mathematics: Computational paths to discovery'', A. K. Peters 2004 * with Robert F. Lucas, Samuel Williams (eds.): ''Performance tuning of scientific applications.'' Chapman & Hall/CRC Computational Science Series,

CRC Press The CRC Press, LLC is an American publishing group that specializes in producing technical books. Many of their books relate to engineering, science and mathematics. Their scope also includes books on business, forensics and information technol ...

2010, .

References

Sources

External links

Bailey's websiteExperimental math websiteMath Scholar blogMathematical Investor blogScience Meets Religion website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bailey, David H. 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Brigham Young University alumni Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences alumni Living people 1948 births Latter Day Saints from California