MC ▸ NA ▸ courses ▸ NUMA21 – Spring 2012

Short Description

URL
http://www.maths.lth.se/na/courses/NUMA21
Credits:
7,5 points
Instructors:
Claus Führer and Tony Stillfjord
Teaching Assistants
Ylva Lindén and N.N.
Grading:
U, G, VG
Examination:
Fortnightly graded hand-in assignments and graded final programming project.
Prerequisites:
Elementary courses in mathematics

Contents

The course has two goals: Firstly, a modern scripting language, Python, with strong ties to Scientific Computing and with powerful scientific libraries e.g. Scipy and Matplotlib is taught. Secondly the course serves as a pratical preparation for all other courses in Scientific Computing (beräkningsmatematik).

The course covers

Elementary programing concepts
Arithmetic expressions, for-loops, logical expressions, if statements, functions and classes. These concepts are taught exclusively using mathematical/technical problems and examples.
Mathematical Manipulations
Setting up matrices, solving linear problems, solving differential equations, finding roots, eigenvalues, resonances, without going into the mathematical details.

More advanced concepts such as generators are presented and a basic introduction to the ideas of object oriented programming will be given.

A final lecture will cover syntactical differences between Python/SciPy and MATLAB, to fascilitate the transition to MATLAb, if needed.

Course book

The main book of this course is the last edition of Mark Lutz’s book Learning Python:

Learning Python

Alternatively you may purchase a course manuscript at the second lecture.

You will also find additional material on our Python home page.

Goal

The goal of the course is to give students in an early stage of their education in mathematics and science competence to use state-of-the-art tools for scientific computations. The course is not a replacement for other courses in computer science.