[DGD] Damage Weapons and Stuff (Math and Code)

[Stephen Schmidt]

On Sun, 1 Jun 2003, Noah Gibbs wrote:
> What I'm talking about doesn't actually use
> derivatives.  What I'm saying is that every iteration,
> when estimating where the sample between the other two
> is, pretend the two outside points define a line, so
> your derivative would just be the slope between points
> a and c.  Lines *do* have analytic derivatives :-)

I'm not sure I understand this 100%, but yes, that should
work pretty well for a normal distribution.

> The top and
> far ends of the curve are decent examples of
> pathologically bad cases for Newton's Method if memory
> serves.

The far end's not too bad, I think, but the top is definitely
bad, since its derivative goes to 0 as X goes to 0.

>  The line thing is simple, predictable, and
> easily fast enough for what he's doing here.

Agreed.

Steve

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