Computers and Programming

Project Vincent, Web Pages, the Mac Lab

This course's standard computing platform is MATLAB, either on Project Vincent or in the ISU Math Lab familiarly known as the Mac Lab.

You should add the following lines to your .startup.tty file on Project Vincent:

        add mathclasses
        add matlab

After you have "added" the matlab locker, you can run matlab with

        vincent% matlab

On Project Vincent you can reach the Web Pages for this course directly (this is convenient for downloading or viewing PostScript files on a workstation screen, for example). Do the following:

	vincent% attachmathwww
	vincent% cd /home/mathwww/alex/273

This puts you in the directory where the Web Pages for this course are kept. To view the first homework assignment, for example, you can do

	vincent% add ghost
	vincent% cd /home/mathwww/alex/273/homework
	vincent% ghostview hwk1.ps &

Follow the link to the Mac Lab to see hours of operation and other useful info.

Also consult the writeup on MATLAB on Math Department machines and on Project Vincent, prepared by Professor Keinert.

MATLAB

MATLAB is an interactive high-performance mathematical software system based on Cleve Moler's dictum that life is too short to spend it writing DO-loops.

Additional resources for learning to use MATLAB

D. M. Etter, Engineering Problem Solving with Matlab, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1993 (Call number TA331 E88 1993 in the ISU Parks Library). This book contains a very lengthy and very elementary introduction to Matlab programming.
For an easy introduction to MATLAB, get the MATLAB Primer [PostScript] [PDF] by Kermit Sigmon. CRC Press sells a newer, expanded edition of this document as a book (ISBN 0-8493-9440-6; call number QA297 .S4787 1994 in the ISU Parks Library). You might consider buying the book; it is much longer and has more topics than the PostScript file here, and only costs $12.95. However, this PostScript document is completely adequate for this course.

Other mathematical software systems

Mathematica is a general system for doing mathematical computations. The numerical part of Mathematica, however, has some unusual properties owing to its nonstandard model of floating point computation. Richard Fateman remarks on this and many other topics in his article, A Review of Mathematica [PostScript] [PDF] in the Journal of Symbolic Computation. If you don't have time to read the review, just do

	a = 1.1111111111111111
	Do[a=2a-a,{55}];
	a
	a+1

Numerical Recipes enjoys some popularity among scientists, but not all the reported experience is good. A collection of reviews, from scientific journals and from Usenet users, is available on the Web.