David Harold Bailey (born 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, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

and

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

. He received his B.S. in mathematics from

Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ...

in 1972 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1976. He worked for 14 years as a

at NASA Ames Research Center, and then from 1998 to 2013 as a Senior Scientist at the

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...

. 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) 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. Before that, ...

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 Richard Crandall was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and spent two years ...

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 is a long-time collaborator with the late

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. 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 computation in which many calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different fo ...

. 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). Fourier analysis converts a signal from its original domain (often time or space) to a representation in th ...

, 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. 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 of financial markets. In general, there exist two separate branches of finance that require ...

, 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, 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, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure a ...

. In 2008 he was a co-recipient of the Gordon Bell Prize 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 member ...

. 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 2000 for outstanding expository papers published in the ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' or the ''Notices of the Amer ...

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 Christianity, Christian church that considers itself to be the Restorationism, restoration of 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.statement by Bailey on his views on science and religion
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Selected works

* with Peter B. Borwein and Simon Plouffe: * 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 Neil J. Calkin (born 29 March 1961) is a professor at Clemson University in the Algebra and Discrete Mathematics group of the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences. His interests are in combinatorial and probabilistic methods, mainly ...

, Roland Girgensohn, D. Russell Luke,

Victor Moll Victor Hugo Moll (born 1956) is a Chilean American mathematician specializing in calculus. Moll studied at the Universidad Santa Maria and at the New York University with a master's degree in 1982 and a doctorate in 1984 with Henry P. McKean ( ...

: ''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 tec ...

2010, .

References

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