Close Enough for Scientific Work
- Introduce the problem.
- Present a simple solution (100-200 lines of code).
- Show how to test that code, explaining:
- what tests have been chosen,
- why they have been chosen, and
- how the author decided on the tolerances for those tests.
- (Optional) Add a feature, or extend the program in some other way, and show:
- how the tests are extended to handle the change, and
- how the testing pays off.
- explain unit testing, the difference between verification and validation, etc. (we'll do that),
- explain how floating point works or that it's hard (ditto), or
- use math that even your close colleagues would have to look up.
Authors will retain the copyright on their work, but all material must be made available under the Creative Commons - Attribution (CC-BY) license, and all software must be made available under the MIT License. You may use any (widely-used) format and programming language you like—we will employ a professional editor to handle copy editing and production. However, we ask that you don't:
We have used this model to produce several previous books, including:
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If you would like to contribute, please either submit a pull request to the repository mail Greg Wilson. And please help spread the word—we think that a couple of dozen worked examples will help most scientists more than any amount of preaching, and between us, we ought to be able to put them together.