Math 4 - MATLAB Programming

Spring 2016, Section E9151

Instructor: Kyle Falbo
Office: None
Office hours: Available by Appointment
Math Lab hours: W 1:00-1:30 in LRC 101
E-mail: kyle-falbo@redwoods.edu or message via Canvas
WWW: faculty.redwoods.edu/kylefalbo

Math 4 is a 3-unit course on the fundamentals of computer programming, with an emphasis on programming for scientific, mathematical, and engineering applications. We will use MATLAB as our programming environment. MATLAB is a powerful yet easy-to-use program with advanced numerical, graphical, and symbolic capabilities, and over the last several years it has become the programming environment of choice in most engineering curricula around the country.

Course topics include:

• Introduction to programming and MATLAB; history
• Algorithms and programs
• Data types; floating point arithmetic; error analysis and stability
• Arrays and array operations
• Control structures: conditionals, loops
• Input/output; strings and formatting; file operations
• User-defined functions
• Plotting
• Using built-in algorithms: optimization and numerical integration (areas)
• Root-finding
• Numerical solutions of systems of linear equations; ill-conditioned matrices
• Interpolation
• Least-squares data-fitting
• Numerical solutions of ordinary differential equations