Application of Scientific Computing

Math 552 -- Spring 2008

Welcome to my numerics class home page !! Bookmark it and check it often.
All class announcements appear here, including homework and project assignments. This is an edited version of last semester's Math 551 page.

Information

Robin Young is the instructor. Here are my office hours.

Class meets : Tuesday and Thursday at 11:15 am in Lederle GRT 123

The text is : "Numerical Methods Using MATLAB", 4th Ed.
by John Mathews & Kurtis Fink
Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2004.

Course work

Please send me e-mail early in the semester so you can get onto my email list.

Here are the Homework assignments, due as noted. Please start early and turn in assignments on time!

  • Here's the first project, due Thursday, March 27th.
  • Here's the optional project on nonlinear shooting methods. Use it to boost your grade!
  • Here's the final assignment on the heat equation. It's due Wednesday, May 21st.

    Grades will be based on assigned work and class interaction and participation. I will be assigning several homeworks, which will include programming. I will likely also assign at least one fairly large project: expect to give a presentation of your results. Note that at least 15% of your grade will be subjective, depending on class participation and demonstration of effort.

    Syllabus

    We will work with Mathews & Fink, although I may not lecture directly from it. I am expecting to teach Math 552 from the same book, so over the course of the year we'll cover pretty much all of it. In an ideal world, I'd try to spend approximately the following time on each chapter: This totals 12 1/2 weeks; if we have more time we'll probably do more PDEs. I'll likely cover more than the text when we do PDEs, providing other references as necessary.
    Please note that this is a guide only, and should not be taken as official!

    Programming

    Programming exercises should be done in MATLAB, which is easy to use and has a useful graphical interface. If you don't have access to Matlab, you might try GNU Octave, a free Matlab clone.

    You can get a copy of Octave (for most operating systems) from the Octave home page. I am happy to help you get this working on your computer, if you ask!

    Here are the Matlab code listings for all the programs in the text; most of them should work directly in Octave too.

    Your Responsibilities

    Please ask lots of questions in and out of class. I can help with programming, but you should ask those questions outside of class.

    Please let me know in advance of any special circumstances which may prevent you from attending classes.

    Help each other out and discuss difficulties, but do your own work. You are expected to know the difference between shared and copied work. Cheating of any type will not be tolerated and will be harshly dealt with.

    Please be courteous to and considerate of your colleagues.

    maintained by Robin Young