Introduction to Numerical Methods


Class meetings:

Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 8:10-10:00am, B844 East Hall

Instructor:

Edmond Nadler
office: 3826 East Hall, 763-1184
email: enadler@umich.edu

Office Hours:

Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 10:00-11:00am, or by appointment.

 

Course Description

This is a survey course of the basic numerical methods which are used to solve practical scientific problems. Important concepts such as accuracy, stability, efficiency and convergence of these methods are discussed, and selected methods are implemented in the MATLAB computer language.

Textbook

D. Kincaid and W. Cheney, Numerical Analysis: Mathematics of Scientific Computing, 3rd Edition, Brooks/Cole, 2002.

Syllabus

Download syllabus in Adobe PDF Adobe PDFformat.

Computer Language

We make extensive use of Matlab, a technical computing environment and language for numerical computation and visualization produced by The MathWorks, Inc.. This software is available in computer labs around campus. A brief MATLAB tutorial and longer primer are available in the Handouts section. Here is a list of some Matlab resources available on the net:

Handouts

in Adobe PDFformat

·        Guidelines for Numerical Analysis HW

·        MATLAB Tutorial from MIT (7 pp.)

·        MATLAB Tutorial by Peter Blossey, U. Washington (16 pp.)

·        MATLAB Primer by Kermit Sigmon, U. Florida (39 pp.)

·        Review of Linear Systems and Matrix Algebra

·        Supplement on Numerical Linear Algebra

Homework

1.     Taylor Series and Computer Arithmetic, due Wed. July 2

2.     Root Finding, due Fri. July 11

3.     Numerical Linear Algebra, due Tue. July 22

4.     Interpolation and Approximation, due Wed. July 30

5.     Numerical Integration and Differentiation, due Wed. Aug. 6

6.     Numerical Methods for Initial-Value Problems, due Wed. Aug 13

Grading

40% - 6 Homework assignments; drop lowest score
25% - 1 Midterm Exam (90 minutes, 1 sheet of notes, no calculators)
35% - 1 Final Exam (2 hours, 1 sheet of notes, no calculators)