COS 323 - Computing for the Physical and Social Sciences

Fall 2008

Use C, C++, or Java for the first three assignments, and Matlab for the last one.

There is no formal textbook for the course, but the Numerical Recipes series of books contains a good deal of information, code, and references on many of the algorithms we'll be discussing. The book is available at most bookstores, or there's an online version of the C (and Fortran, but not C++) books.

Date	Main Topic    ...    Supplementary Material	Assignments
Thu, Sep 11	Course mechanics, introduction to modeling    IBM 704    Numerical computing*
Tue, Sep 16	Simulation, population genetics    details (epidemics)    details (pop. genetics)
Thu, Sep 18	Using random numbers    details (RNGs)    man random    auctions    binomial    Plotting
Tue, Sep 23	Interpreting results, descriptive statistics    details (statistics)    Review of C
Thu, Sep 25	Simulation    Madness    nasdaq    Competition    Bubbles in Pipeline    Wave Functions
Tue, Sep 30	Integration*    details (integ.)    Simpson    Symbolic Computation	Assignment 1 due
Thu, Oct 2	Root finding, 1-d*    details (Root finding)    666    Buchanan, NYT 10/1/08    phase unwrapping
Tue, Oct 7	Optimization (1-d)*    details (Optimization)    Black-Scholes73
Thu, Oct 9	higher dimensions (con't)    animation (wikipedia)    example (umich)    IIR digital filter design
Tue, Oct 14	Constrained optimization, linear programming    Examples (Vanderbei)    FIR filter design
con't	NP-completeness (sketch)    Local search:    min-cost networks
con't	nat. gas pipelines    flowshop problem    gatech/proctor & gamble
Thu, Oct 16	ODEs, basics    details (ODEs)    details (ODEs)    ODEs in Matlab and Maple    ditto
Tue, Oct 21	details (accuracy and stability)	Assignment 2 due
Thu, Oct 23	Chaos    details (chaos)    logistic map    chaos    Phillips curve    cellular automata    Sonification
Tue, Oct 28	No class - fall break
Thu, Oct 30	No class - fall break
Tue, Nov 4	PDEs    details (PDEs)    nonlinear pendulum
Thu, Nov 6	PDEs cont., heat & wave eqns.    details (PDEs)    more details (PDEs)    Dan Russell's demos
Tue, Nov 11	Solitons¶    FPU 55    Dauxois08    Soliton computing: up to 2001   up to 2008
Thu, Nov 13	Sampling, DFT, FFT¶    details (sampling, etc.)    sampling and aliasing*
Tue, Nov 18	using the FFT¶    details (using the FFT, etc.)    matlab intro§	Assignment 3 due
Thu, Nov 20	more on using the FFT¶
Tue, Nov 25	Signal processing*    details (2-D FFT and image processing)
Thu, Nov 27	No class - Thanksgiving break
Tue, Dec 2	Solving linear systems*    examples    Lord Kelvin¶    Japan
Thu, Dec 4	Data modeling and least squares fitting*   more least squares*
Tue, Dec 9	Linear systems: iterative and sparse methods*    notes$ for Assign. 4	Assignment 4 due
Thu, Dec 11	discussion of student term paper proposals	Project prop. due
Tue, Jan 13	Dean's date	Project due

   * = slides from Szymon Rusinkiewicz    $ = from Connelly Barnes    § = from Sina Jafarpour    ¶ = new or in progress