COS 323 - Computing for the Physical and Social Sciences

Fall 2013

Please note that this schedule is very tentative, and will change.

Date	Topic (click for lecture notes)	Readings	Assignments
Thu, Sep 12	Intro; numerical computation and accuracy	Ch. 1, 2; Yikes.java; Article on top 10 algorithms	Join this class on piazza
Tue, Sep 17	Root finding	Ch. 3.1-3.4
Thu, Sep 19	Optimization	Ch. 3.5, 9.2 Informal Help Session 9/27/2013
Tue, Sep 24	Constrained optimization and linear programming	Ch. 9.3 (optional)	Assignment 0 due
Thu, Sep 26	Solving linear systems	Ch. 5
Tue, Oct 1	Linear systems: iterative and sparse methods	Ch. 7
Thu, Oct 3	Data modeling and least squares fitting	Ch. 6
Tue, Oct 8	Nonlinear least squares; robust fitting		Assignment 1 due
Thu, Oct 10	QR, SVD and application to least squares	Ch. 8
Tue, Oct 15	Applications of PCA; Kalman filtering	UNC notes on Kalman filter
Thu, Oct 17	Integration	Ch. 15
Tue, Oct 22	Monte Carlo integration		Assignment 2 due
Thu, Oct 24	In-class exam #1
Tue, Oct 29	No class - fall break
Thu, Oct 31	No class - fall break
Tue, Nov 5	Ordinary differential equations	Ch. 16
Thu, Nov 7	Chaos; Boundary value problems
Tue, Nov 12	Finite-difference approximations for derivatives; Partial differential equations
Thu, Nov 14	PDE stability analysis; Multigrid methods; Poisson image editing	Poisson image editing paper
Tue, Nov 19	Simulation		Assignment 3 due
Thu, Nov 21	Statistics
Tue, Nov 26	Signal processing, convolution
Thu, Nov 28	No class - Thanksgiving
Tue, Dec 3	Fast Fourier transform	Ch. 13
Thu, Dec 5	Sampling and aliasing
Tue, Dec 10	Data visualization		Assignment 4 due
Thu, Dec 12	In-class exam #2
Tue, Jan 14	Dean's date		Final project writeup due