Computing the Ten Millionth Bernoulli Number In Mathematica
First Clipped on Jun. 13, 2008
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But a few years ago I programmed a quite different algorithm into Mathematica. Instead of directly computing the Bernoulli numbers using a recurrence relation, I instead used a trick recently suggested by Bernd Kellner: computing Bernoulli numbers by computing the Riemann zeta function.
It’s the integrated nature of Mathematica that makes things like this practical. Without Mathematica, one has to use the simplest building blocks to make efficient algorithms. But with Mathematica, one can take for granted access to efficient very-high-level operations—like computing Riemann zeta functions.
