Instructional Staff

Name	Role	E-mail	Office hours
Shuang Liu	Instructor	shl083@ucsd.edu	MW: 2:00-2:50PM AP&M 1121/1132
Jiyoung Choi A01  and  A02	Teaching Assistant	jichoi@ucsd.edu	Thursdays 10:00-11:50am, HSS 3070

Course Information

• Catalog Description: Numerical differentiation and integration. Ordinary differential equations and their numerical solution. Basic existence and stability theory. Difference equations. Boundary value problems. Prerequisites: MATH 20D or 21D and MATH 170B, or consent of instructor.
• Textbook: The required textbook for this course is Numerical Analysis: Mathematics of Scientific Computing, Third Edition, AMS Press, 2002, by David Kincaid and Ward Cheney.
  
  Note: You are greatly encouraged to read the textbook (mainly Chapter 7 & 8) alongside the lectures and other materials we provide.
  


• Coursework: There will be homework assignments, they will be posted on the Canvas website for the class. There will be one midterm, and a final exam; dates, times, and locations posted on syllabus.

Lecture Notes

Lecture notes will be made available on Canvas under Modules. You may use them as supplements, in addition to the lectures and podcast.

About Gradescope

Gradescope is an online tool for uploading and grading assignments an exams (it is now under the umbrella of TurnItIn). You will turn in your homework and exams through Gradescope, and you will access your graded exams there as well. You can access Gradescope through Canvas.

• You can access Gradescope directly through your Canvas Math 170C page, by click on the "Gradescope" link in the tab on the left.
  
• If you have not yet been added to the course, the Gradescope entry code is 8N87YY. IMPORTANT:  use your UCSD email!
• Please make sure your files are legible before submitting, and also to assign the pages you want graded for each problem.
  
• Most word processors can save files as a pdf.
• There are many tools to combine pdfs, such as here, and others for turning jpgs into pdfs, such as here.

About Matlab

MATLAB (from "matrix laboratory") is a programming language and numerical computing environment widely used in applied mathematics, engineering, computer science and sciences in general. Many assignments (and even some test questions) will be to write short programs for Matlab.  One thing to know about Matlab: the command ‘help’ is your best friend! Use to look up what functions do and the syntax.

We will do basic MATLAB programming in this course. While we will talk about the MATLAB specific programming details during class, I will expect that you know some programming basics, including what a "for loop" is. (The for loop is about the most complicated programming concept we'll use, and fortunately it's not too complicated.)

There are three main ways to get access to Matlab:

• UCSD students can download it for free from this link.
• For a review of basic programming in MATLAB, a good resource for intro MATLAB can be found on Professor Bruce Driver's website, here.
• You can use a UCSD virtual computer lab (from home or anywhere). You log in with your UCSD credentials. Info here; search for "virtual computing labs".
  
• You can buy a student copy of the software at the bookstore for $99.
• You can also access MATLAB in one of our physical computing labs.