ACM11: Introduction to Matlab and Mathematica
Don’t recall if I’ve mentioned this before, but this term I’ll be coteaching a course on Matlab and Mathematica. I’ll cover Mathematica. The course website is http://www.acm.caltech.edu/~acm11/2008/FALL. No promises, but I’ll try to post quality lecture notes as the course proceeds, and the other instructor has said the same. There should be around 10 lectures– it’s a one credit hour course– 5 on Matlab, then 5 on Mathematica.
I have about 4 weeks before I need to have my lecture plans finalized. Any input is welcome; there’s so much potential material to cover in such little time, and I’m having trouble deciding what level of knowledge I should aim to impart. Currently I have a patchwork of basic knowledge I’d like to impart– I’ve gotten along fine with my limited knowledge of pattern matching (i.e. I’ve rarely used restricted pattern matching or even double blanks), so I’ve decided that the more esoteric, albeit ‘basic’, features of Mathematica aren’t appropriate for this course– but I’m having trouble linking them together into 5 cohesive lectures with some sort of narrative structure. Partly this is because I want to cover a lot of material, and partly it’s because I learned techniques and theory as I needed to, rather than in an ordered fashion.
What I don’t want to do is end up teaching solely syntax. To that end, I’m relegating a lot of those issues (e.g. the common forms of iterators) to the status of not-quite-homework; in class I’ll try to motivate every lecture with a problem or class of problems, e.g. how to set up Monte Carlo simulations or how to calculate and simplify some nasty integral, and introduce a batch of tools/concepts as a way to solve them. The homework will be a mix of simple one-liners and challenging problems.
As an example of the type of problem I’m interested in, one of the assignments will be to construct a truss solver: the user will input the geometry of the truss, and the loads, and the students’ program should determine the reaction at the truss’ support points. Another will be to, given the equation for a closed figure (not necessarily convex!), simulate a ray bouncing around inside the figure. I need at least three more problem ideas; suggestions are welcome.
Possibly relevant posts:
- A Mathematica Grammar! (6/25/2005)
- Truss Solver (10/8/2004)
- The one-month gap (7/27/2006)