Twenty years of Lambert W.

David Jeffrey, Western University

Friday February 12th, 2016, Room and Time TBA.



Abstract

The year 2016 marks 20 years since the publication of the paper 
"On the Lambert W function".  As will be pointed out, the function
was studied before 1996, but this publication has proved to be 
the most cited reference. The talk will review some of the decisions
made in defining the function, particularly in defining its branches.
The talk will present some of the interesting and beautiful properties 
of the function, including recent work that improves on the results in 
the original papers. Specifically, expressions for derivatives and 
series expansions, the role of differences between branches, the 
convergence of series expansions. Some comments on implications for 
computer algebra systems will also be made.