ESP Biography

SPENCER COMPTON, ESP Teacher

Major: Computer Science

College/Employer: Stanford

Year of Graduation: G

Brief Biographical Sketch:

Not Available.

Past Classes

(Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

M8197: A Faster Algorithm for Multiplying Big Numbers in Splash Fall 2025 (Nov. 15 - 16, 2025)

Have you ever noticed how multiplying numbers by hand takes way longer than addition? Shockingly, in 1960, a 23-year-old student Anatoly Karatsuba discovered a smarter way to multiply than what we learned in grade school! In this class, we will talk about the ideas behind Karatsuba’s multiplication algorithm and why it is faster than the grade school multiplication method when you are multiplying very big numbers. This lecture is just about the mathy ideas and has no programming, but this approach is actually used by real computer programs!