[R-pkgs] new package: ResistorArray

[Robin Hankin]

Announcing the release of a new R package ResistorArray.


This package solves the (nontrivial) general problem of resistance on 
arbitrary (finite)
resistor arrays.

Outside electrical engineering, the problem has a wide range of 
applications to
situations such as groundwater modelling; there is a direct 
correspondence
between electrical networks and random walks.

The package has a reasonably complete set of literature references, and 
solves a number
of classical problems such as the resistance between opposite points of 
a skeleton resistor
cube, and the Wheatstone bridge.

The package comes with a variety of standard resistor arrays, including 
all five platonic
solids, the Fibonacci ladder, and "N" arbitrary resistors in series.

The package gives nice numerical illustrations of a few theoretical 
results from the
recent (2004) literature.

One of the Google aptitude tests was to determine the electrical 
resistance between two points
on an infinite grid of resistors. I couldn't solve this problem 
analytically (although I found the
other day that a solution does exist);  ResistorArray gets the answer 
correct to within about 1%.



--
Robin Hankin
Uncertainty Analyst
Southampton Oceanography Centre
European Way, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK
  tel  023-8059-7743