Numerical Methods

What It's All About

What it is

During the Spring '95 semester, I taught a course in Numerical Methods. Inspired by Pete Stewart's Numerical Analysis Afternotes, I decided to write up my notes (also after the fact). One main difference between the Afternotes and my notes is that mine are in the form of slides (about 200 of them, in LaTeX), and I teach from them in class.

An additional difference is that I teach engineers, and therefore the course is not theorem-oriented. (It is also only a two-credit course.) On the other hand, the emphasis is on understanding the underlying concepts, rather than just the mechanics of problem solving.

The notes follow very closely the text I use: Numerical Mathematics and Computing, third edition, by Ward Cheney & David Kincaid, copyright 1994, Brooks/Cole Publishing Company. The slides are for Chapters 1-8 and 10, excluding sections 1.1, 2.2, 5.3, 6.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.3 and 10.3 (plus other subsections here and there).

Please see the suggested text(s), regarding the material on which this course is based — highly recommended, not that my approbation is needed.

How to get it

For the gzip'ed files (press for file sizes and dates):

If you are working in the Windows environment, consider WinZip or NetZIP for gunzip'ing and untar'ing.

Please note that for ghostview'ing, due to a discrepancy in the rotation direction, one needs to run "ghostview -swap", or from within ghostview, choose the "Swap Landscape" Orientation. Or simply turn your monitor upside down. :-).

Planned changes/enhancements

  1. I hope to add more figures and examples, particularly ones pertaining to the various engineering disciplines of interest to my students.
  2. I would like to add interactive features to the slides, perhaps other animations aids as well.
  3. I distribute the slides to my students before class so that they are able to take notes right on the slides. This saves oodles of time, and prevents the introduction of errors by me on the board, and by the students in their notebooks.

    On the other hand, it has been argued that sitting in front of a set of slides, and not being interactively involved in the development of the lecture (if only by writing out the notes), the material just does not penetrate.

    Therefore, as per a suggestion from my friend Steven Prawer of the University of Melbourne Physics Department, I plan on developing a set of slides which have "holes" in them–boxes with information not filled in. With this compromise I hope to have the best of both approaches, saving time, but also involving the students in the give and take of the development.

Format note

The PostScript and PDF slides are for letter size paper. For A4 paper, or for printing a number of slides per page (perhaps to hand out to students), I suggest the use of psutils, specifically pstops and psnup. Please see the corresponding man pages. For example, to horizontally and vertically center the slides on A4 paper: 

    pstops -pletter '(-.1in,.35in)' slides.ps slides-a4.ps
and to print 4 slides per page ("letter" -> "a4" if appropriate): 
    psnup -pletter -r -c -d -4 slides.ps slides-quad.ps
(Hint: to do both, do the second first.)

Feedback

I am very interested in your comments, criticisms, jokes (did anyone read that? :-) ), ideas, bug reports, etc. Please forward such input to me. In addition, if interested, drop me a line and I will notify you of changes and updates.

Happy computing and teaching!

Aaron