You might be an LAPACK geek if...

Here's a quiz modeled after the infamous "purity tests," except that it has nothing to do with goats and everything to do with LAPACK, the most awesome body of Fortran ever created.  Score +1 for a yes answer, 0 for a no answer, and add up the points.

n00bs:


1. Have you ever called an LAPACK routine from one of your codes?

2. Do you know what the abbreviation LAPACK stands for?


3. Do you know how to pronounce LAPACK?  (No, it's not "la" like "lalala"...)

4. Are you aware that using the reference BLAS implementation is generally a bad idea, and do you know how to seek out a better one?

"Smug LAPACK weenies"

5. Have you ever built the reference LAPACK library from the Fortran, not because you didn't know it was installed but because you (a) wanted the latest version, or (b) it wasn't available on the exotic prototype hardware which you have the misfortune of being asked to use?

6. Have you ever found and reported an actual bug in some LAPACK implementation?  (One extra point if you went to the vendor's booth at a conference specifically to report the bug.)

7. Did you learn Fortran specifically to call BLAS or LAPACK routines, because it "seems more natural" than using the CBLAS header files?

8. Do you get the math joke on the cover of the LAPACK Users' Guide?

1337 |-|/\x0rz



9. Can you explain from memory what the first three letters of "DGEQRF" mean?


10. Have you ever contributed to LAPACK code?

11. Are you an author of an LAPACK Working Note?

12. Do you belong to a UC Berkeley or UTK "lapackers" e-mail list?

Beyond the Pale

13. If somebody asks for a banded LU factorization with partial pivoting, can you tell them the LAPACK routine name without looking?

14. Do you own and proudly wear a ScaLAPACK 1.0 T-shirt?  (One extra point if you get the math joke on the front.)

15. Have you found a counterexample for convergence of an eigenvalue routine?

Scoring:
1-5:  Just starting
6-10:  Escape while you can
11-15:  Hopeless
>15:  I know exactly who you are so you'd better not skew the curve!