Overall Course Learning Objectives
The Overall Course Learning Objectives are specific skills that you should obtain
by the end of Quarter. Homework assignments, quizzes and exams are designed to
measure your attainment of these objectives. Therefore, if you can do each of the
following activities very well, then you will get a good grade.
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The ability to communicate via email, to download and read on-line course
materials, and to participate in on-line discussions about the course.
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The ability to write programs in MATLAB that involve loops, logical block
constructs (
if
... else
), plotting, and simple file
input/output. The ability to write programs that evaluate and plot analytical
functions. The ability to translate numerical algorithms to correct MATLAB
programs.
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The ability to distinguish between the effects of truncation error and roundoff
error in evaluating a finite number of terms in an infinite series.
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The ability to define machine precision, underflow limit, and overflow limit and
identify the built-in MATLAB variables for these concepts. The ability to use
machine precision to construct absolute and relative tolerances for the
convergence of iterative computations.
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The ability to apply MATLAB programs for finding the zeros of a function of one
variable.
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The ability to manually perform addition, subtraction, and multiplication
operations on vectors and matrices. The ability to manually compute vector
norms. The ability to use all of these linear algebra operations in MATLAB
programs.
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The ability to set up and solve linear systems of equations. The ability to
manually perform Gaussian elimination on small systems. The ability to use
MATLABs backslash operator to correctly compute the solution to a system of
linear equations. The ability to interpret the condition number of coefficient
matrix for a linear system of equations.
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The ability to use MATLAB programs to perform curve fits of data to polynomials
and linear combinations of arbitrary functions. The ability to use a residual
plot from a curve fit as an indicator of whether a better curve fit might be
obtainable.
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The ability to manually apply Eulers method, Heuns method, and the fourth
order Runge-Kutta method to advance a single ordinary differential equation for
one or two steps of the independent variable. The ability to use MATLAB programs
to obtain numerical solutions to ordinary differential equations.