CSC336 Numerical Methods
Course information for current students:
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No classes
October 27-31, 2025 (Fall break / Reading week -- A&S calendar).
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To access the assignment, or the notes, you will need to type
your CDF (teaching labs) username (same as UTorId) as loginname,
and last 5 digits of your student number as password.
This password (for accessing the website) cannot be reset,
and it is only for accessing the website.
If you registered for the course today, please wait a day,
to check access to the website.
Please note that to access the servers/computers,
the password is different.
There is an initial password set by the system (usually the student number),
and then you can set it to whatever you want.
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Bulletin board for csc336 Fall 2025 (later)
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Important note on the use of bulletin boards:
No parts of or whole answers to the assignment/exam problems
should be posted to the boards (or anywhere else),
even after the assignment is due.
Questions and answers (even written by you) should never
be shared with anyone or anywhere.
Any violation of this rule will bring trouble to the poster.
Please use judgement before posting.
Any questions posted on the bulletin boards should be general enough
and should not reveal intermediate or final results (correct or wrong).
If unsure, ask by e-mail to instructor.
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All assignments and exams are to be done individually by each student.
See the course outline
about academic integrity and additional information.
- Here is a latex example file,
with associated files
spyalt.eps, spyblock.eps,
trochoid1.m,
assign.bib, to compile correctly,
and output 336a1.pdf.
You can use it for assignments, but you may also use you own latex template.
Please always use font size 12 and linespread 1.1, as shown in the sample file.
Do NOT use dark background in any page or figure.
See the course outline for more details on presentation.
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CDF/Teaching Labs:
Please see http://www.cdf.toronto.edu
or http://www.teach.cs.toronto.edu
(they are the same), especially the
Resources, Intro to new students tab, and the
Using Labs, Remote Access Server tab.
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MATLAB, etc remotely on cdf:
If you want to run matlab and other applications remotely
on teach.cs (CDF), and you are using Windows or Mac OS
on your computer/laptop, you will need the so-called
X forwarding on your computer/laptop.
X forwarding allows you to run any application, including matlab,
remotely on teach.cs (CDF) and the output/display/plots/etc
be shown on your computer/laptop.
See
https://www.teach.cs.toronto.edu/using_cdf/x2go.html
for a way to have X forwarding on your computer/laptop.
The basic Matlab is free for students.
See https://www.mathworks.com/academia/tah-portal/university-of-toronto-676468.html
So you can also install it on your computer/laptop,
and run it locally.
You can also consider free (perpetually) alternatives to Matlab,
such as Octave.
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To use matlab on cdf, through the linux shell, you need to login via ssh
(on an xterm or other terminal in unix, linux, mac, or cygwin,
and on putty in windows,
or through some free X forwarding application such as mobaxterm, or X2Go)
with a command such as
ssh -X user@cdf.toronto.edu
or
ssh -l user -X -f wolf.cdf.toronto.edu xterm
where ``user'' is your cdf username, then, once on cdf, run
/usr/local/bin/matlab
or
/usr/local/bin/matlab -nodesktop
Within matlab, you may want to go to a certain directory, say ~/matlab,
and for this you can use the unix shell command
cd ~/matlab
within matlab. You may also want to have a startup.m file
in that directory, to always run some standard commands
(e.g. format compact) every time you start matlab.
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The textbook for this course is Michael Heath's,
Scientific Computing: an introductory survey,
SIAM 2018 (Revised Second Edition).
This is the same book used for CSC336 Spring 2025.
https://my.siam.org/Store/Product/viewproduct/?ProductId=30156464
The list price is approximately $94.00 USD, but
there is also a 30% discount for SIAM members
(students are able to take advantage of this if they sign-up
for a free SIAM Student membership).
https://www.siam.org/Membership/Join-SIAM/Individual-Members/Student
This book was also published by McGraw-Hill Inc in the past,
but because the price was quite higher,
we ordered custom-made copies through the UT bookstore,
which were cheaper.
This year we did not order those copies,
as the SIAM price is reasonable.
However, if you find those copies from past students,
they are equivalent (not identical, but equivalent) to the SIAM edition.
This book covers most of what is needed in the course.
Textbook web page (see educational modules)
Material to be covered in the course
(with textbook sections in parentheses) (later)
Notes and handouts:
Note on use of notes:
Notes will be available when the course starts.
While it may be convenient to study for the course by reading the notes,
it should be made clear that the notes are not there to substitute
the textbook or any relevant book. Notes are always more condensed
and give less overall information than books.
Notes with math notation, etc, are difficult to read online.
It may be preferable for some of you to print out the 4-page style notes
on paper (preferably double-sided).
Access to the data below requires that
you type in your CDF (teaching labs) username
(same as UTorId)
and last 5 digits of your student number as password.
This password (for accessing the website) cannot be reset.
Lecture notes
Tutorial notes
Assignments
Other