CMPUT 340 - Introduction to Numerical Methods
Overview
In introductory calculus and linear algebra courses, the focus is mainly on analytic solutions to problems and the purpose is to gain a working knowledge of mathematical tools and theory in the process. However, most real world problems do not have closed form analytic solutions. Instead one has to use computer algorithms to calculate numerical solutions.
In this course, we will combine your math knowledge with a little bit of programming and study a selection of numerical algorithms applicable to a wide range of everyday problems. The course builds on your linear algebra and calculus courses, and extends your knowledge so that you can compute numerical solutions to many problems for which there is no closed form algebraic solution (e.g. root finding, many integrals, approximation problems, etc).
The focus of the course is practical numerical solution methods. You will learn to apply a wide variety of numerical algorithms to real world problems. In the course, we will also study a bit of mathematical modelling, ie how to formalize a real world problem into a mathematical notation.
Objectives
- Be able to program numerical algorithms in Matlab*
- Have the basic skills to analyze the quality of a numerical solution (accuracy, error detection in data, identifying imprecise calculations)
*Matlab is a package with a lot of basic mathematical operations built-in, a powerful graphing package and a convenient scripting and programming environment. Once mastered, it is much quicker to use for numerical problems than C or Fortran, for example.