Re: [...] my rant on reductions...

[r754@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

> To: r754@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: stds-754@xxxxxxxx, ejr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [...] my rant on reductions... 
> Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 17:07:31 -0700
>
> And r754@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
>  -    The REAL solution is to provide them with the ability to take
>  -    long products & sums & not worry about overflow or underflow.
>
> No, the REAL solution is to use one of the zillion packages
> out there that already solves this problem.  Some are listed
> at
>   http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/Bayes/bnsoft.html
>
> If you want to support these through reduction operations,
> please provide examples where the reductions would make
> some of these packages easier to read, debug, and modify.
>
> Jason

        I fear the answer may not be so simple, Jason.  While I am
        not familiar with this particular package, the package these
        people are using IS a standard package for Markov modelling
        with Bayesian statistics.  It appears that such standard
        packages are unfit for modelling something as complex as
        proteins as utterances over an alphabet of amino acids.  The
        calculations involve far too much dynamic range for double.
        While it IS true that double extended or quad would be barely
        sufficient for the toy problem the graduate student was
        working on, the REAL problems require even more dynamic range.
        Standard packages that are good for the rest of the world don't
        begin to approach the range needed.  They need our help.  - Dan