Homepage for CSC 338, Spring 2010

Numerical Methods

University of Toronto at Mississauga



ANNOUNCEMENTS:
  • The final version of Assignment 3 is now available.
  • The midterm test will cover the material in chapters 1, 2 and 3 of Heath that was covered in class, in tutorial and on the assignments.
  • There will be no Matlab questions on the midterm.
  • Reminder: The MIDTERM TEST will be during the first hour of class on Weds March 3.
  • The midterm test will be open textbook. That is, you will be allowed to bring the course textbook (Heath) into the test, but no other aids are allowed.
  • Tentative due dates for all the assignments are now available, below.

    Numerical methods are algorithms for solving practical problems in applied mathematics. They are used extensively in many areas of science, engineering and business. They are crucial to computational finance and portfolio management, video games and graphics, robotics and bioinformatics, data mining and machine learning, and many other areas. In fact, many contemporary problems would be impossible to solve without numerical methods. These problems include predicting climate change, designing modern aircraft, producing special effects in movies, finding hidden oil reserves, simulating car crashes, computing the trajectory of spacecraft, estimating the future value of stocks, optimizing the price of airline tickets, simulating the biological activity of living cells, and many more. Numerical methods are run on computers of all sizes, from laptops to workstations to supercomputers. In fact, the need to apply numerical methods to complex problems is the main reason supercomputers were developed.

    Unlike some previous years, this year's course will place less emphasis on theory and proofs, and more emphasis on practical problems and programming. As a fringe benefit, you'll find out what all that math you learned is actually used for!

    Prerequisites:

  • Informal: a basic knowledge of calculus, linear algebra and programming.
  • Formal: CSC207H5/270H5, 290H5; (MAT134Y5/135Y5/137Y5)/(MAT133Y5, 233H5), MAT223H5.

    Text:

  • Michael Heath, Scientific Computing: An Introductory Survey, Second Edition, McGraw Hill, 2002.
  • Roughly the first half of the book will be covered.
  • The relevant chapters have been made available by McGraw Hill in the textbook store at a special price.
  • Interactive demos of the material in the text.

    Instructor:

  • Anthony Bonner
  • email: my last name [at] cs [dot] toronto [dot] edu
  • phone: 905-828-3813 (UTM), 416-978-7441 (St George)
  • office: CC 4004 (UTM), BA 4268 (St George)
  • office hours: MW 3-4pm.

  • Classes: Wednesday 4-6pm, KN 112.
  • Tutorials: Thursday 4-5pm, NE 144.
  • Tutorials may introduce new material not covered in lectures or in the text.
  • Teaching Assistant: TBA
  • Lecture slides
  • Course information sheet

    Midterm test:

  • Weds March 3 in class.

    Assignments:

  • Assignment 1
  • Assignment 2
  • Assignment 3 No more questions will be added.
  • Assignment 4 is tentatively due on April 1.

    Data for assignments:

  • MNIST handwritten digits [mnist_all.mat] (Courtesy of Sam Roweis)
  • Matrix A [matrixA.mat]
  • 2-dimensional data sample [data2D.mat]

    Additional references:

  • R.L.Burden, J.D. Faires, Numerical Analysis, 8th Edition, Brooks/Cole, 2005.
  • Petersen and Pedersen, The Matrix Cookbook. Free Download
  • Lipschutz and Lipson, Schaum's Outline of Linear Algebra. (very handy, very cheap)
  • Wrede and Spiegle, Schaum's Outline of Calculus. (very handy, very cheap)

    Matlab:

  • Matlab manual.
  • A demo on getting started with Matlab.
  • Other Matlab demos.
  • A sample Matlab program. You do not need to understand the program. It is just an example of Matlab syntax. Try running the program. If you have done everything correctly, a figure should appear.
  • A student version of Matlab for home computers can be purchased from Mathworks.

    Additional Matlab help:

  • Matlab Primer.
  • Matlab Intro.
  • Prof. Christara's A Brief Introduction to MatLab.
  • Cleve Moler's Introduction to MATLAB chapter from his new textbook.
  • Here is a good site for Matlab information and tutorials.
  • Another good site for Matlab information, tutorials and software.

    Octave:

  • You may use Octave instead of Matlab for homework assignments. However, we cannot guarantee to help you if you have problems. Octave is very similar to Matlab and is freely available on the web, but the user interface is not as convenient.
  • Instructions for installing and running Octave in Windows.
  • More details on installing Octave in Windows.
  • Octave manual
  • GNU Octave Repository
  • Octave Wiki

    Plagiarism and Cheating:

  • The academic regulations of the University are outlined in the Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters.
  • Advice on academic offences