P.O. Box 116120
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-6120
phone (352) 505-1546, fax (352) 392-1220
email: my last name at cise.ufl.edu
or DrTimothyAldenDavis at gmail.com
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Prof. Tim Davis,
P.O. Box 116120 University of Florida Gainesville, FL 32611-6120 phone (352) 505-1546, fax (352) 392-1220 email: my last name at cise.ufl.edu or DrTimothyAldenDavis at gmail.com |
Computational Science has become the third branch of science, along with theory and experimentation. You can't do an experiment on, say, the sun, and building a nuclear fusion experiment is rather costly and hard to do. Theory can only take you so far. Computational Science bridges the gap: it can simulate complex scenarios that rely on theory and can be validated by experiments, but are beyond the reach of both.
Your cellphone (nonlinear systems, differential algebraic equations), your iPod (FFT), your car or plane used to get to campus (ordinary differential equations and partial differential equations), the roads and bridges you drove on (ditto), the weather prediction for your flight, all rely on computational numerical methods. Movies, video games, and other media also rely on them (The Cave Troll, for example). Without computational numerical methods, few of these would exist. OK, we might still have roads and bridges, but the Tacoma Bridge could have used some eigenvalue analysis and computational fluid dynamics; see also a video describing the collapse.
If you're in Computer Engineering / Computer Science, you need to know how computational numerical techniques work, because they are a fundamental part of the field.
The objectives of this course is to master the theory and practice of numerical integration, nonlinear equations, linear and nonlinear systems of equations, differential equations, and interpolation, so that they can be used to solve real-world problems.
When Tim Tebow was asked how he managed to obtain a 3.6 GPA while at the same time being heavily involved in UF football, his reply was ``I went to class.'' If Tim can do it, so can you. This Tim expects no less.
You may not use laptops in class without explicit permission. They are a distraction. I have sat in the back of another professor's class, and found that half of the students using laptops were not using them for class purposes. Likewise, you may not send/receive text messages, nor use your cell phone, nor fiddle with your iPod. Leave the devices at home; bring your brain instead. For more info, click here or here.
If you work on just part of the homework together, then each person should turn in their homework. But don't turn in multiple copies of individual problems. Suppose students Alice, Bob, and Carol collaborate on problem 2 on a homework assignment of 4 problems. Then problem 2 need appear on just one student's homework, with a reference to the other two: problem 2, collaboration between Alice, Bob, and Carol. This statement should appear on all 3 student's assignments, and the full answer to problem 2 should appear just once.
If students A, B, and C collaborate on all problems of a homework assignment, then only one student need turn in the homework, but that homework MUST state Homework 3: collaboration between Alice, Bob, and Carol. If it doesn't state this, then only one student will get credit for the homework.
Homework will be turned in on the UF e-Learning site at https://lss.at.ufl.edu/. You will not be submitting paper copies. Writing out the homework by hand is fine, but you will need to scan it in and submit the scanned version. Please use a resolution that is high enough to be legible by the TA, but not so high as to generate massive files.
