Synopses & Reviews
Projects in Scientific Computation is an interdisciplinary senior/graduate level textbook which provides a compendium of text, projects, problems and examples for readers to explore and solve in the field of scientific computing. The book is designed for serious students of science, mathematics and engineering who will deal with scientific computation in their future studies and research. The problem sets have been class-tested and are based on a course taught by the author at Reed College's Physics Department that assumes familiarity with calculus and differential equations. This seven chapter, 384-page textbook will include a 3.5 inch DOS-formatted floppy diskette for use on a variety of computer systems. The disk supports topic material in the text, such as computer algebra examples and graphics samples. The book covers a broad range of subject matter in the field of scientific computation and provides the student with the tools most needed to work with computers. Topics include numerical analysis (evaluation, matrix algebra, differential equations), exploratory computation (projects from mathematics, nature, biology, physics and chemistry), number theory (large-integer arithmetic, prime numbers, fast algorithms, factoring), fast Fourier transforms, wavelets, chaos and fractals, and signal processing (data compression, sound, images). In addition to the student market, there will be an appreciable market for this book by professionals and others as a personal reference source.
Synopsis
This interdisciplinary book provides a compendium of projects, together with a large number of example programs for readers to study and explore. The book is designed for advanced undergraduate or graduate students of science, mathematics and engineering who will deal with scientific computation in their future studies and research. It also contains new and useful reference materials for researchers. The problem sets range from the tutorial to exploratory and, at times, to the impossible. These projects were collected from research results and computational dilemmas during the author's tenure as Chief Scientist at NeXT Computer, Inc. and from his scientific computation lectures in the Department of Physics at Reed College. The content assumes familiarity with such college topics as calculus, differential equations, and at least elementary programming. Each project focuses on computation, theory, graphics, or some combination of these, and is designed with an estimated level of difficulty. The support code for each project takes the form of either C or Mathematica, and is printing in the Appendix. The algorithms are clearly laid out within the text projects, so the book can be used with other symbolic numerical and algebraic manipulation products.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [447]-454) and index.