Syllabus

CS 689-001 Special Topics in Numerical Computing: Computational Modeling
University of Kentucky Call Number 06110 (Fall, 2000).
This is an advanced seminar level course. The content and form of the class will be
determined by the instructor and posted on the class web page and online syllabus.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor or two 500 level CS courses.

Web and Presentation Usage

The course will use the web extensively. You must know how to use a version 4+ browser like ones provided by Netscape or Microsoft. The syllabus can be found as a link in the class home page. The latter is located at the URL

http://www.ccs.uky.edu/~douglas/cs689

Please bookmark this URL and check it often. Homework and announcements will be posted through the web pages in this folder. The class web page will eventually have a number of hyperlinks that you will find either useful or essential.

We will also use presentation software during classes. You should familiarize yourself with PowerPoint or a similar system.

Office Hours

My primary office is 321A McVey Hall. My office telephone number is 257-2326 and the FAX is 323-1029. Feel free to telephone my office as late as 11:00pm. In a pinch, I can be reached at home on weekends at 203-625-9449. Please do not call me at home before 8:00am or after 9:00pm. I respond to e-mail (douglas@ccs.uky.edu) fairly quickly (always include a phone number where I can call you back). If you are stuck on something, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Warning: The entrance to my office is inside another office (321 McVey). I really do not hear knocking on the outer office's door. Please just walk in and continue right into 321A and let me know that you are present. Do not assume that I will know that you are in the outer office. If I am not in my office, go straight to 325 McVey and ask where am I. I may well be in there and have to be extracted from another inner office. Please be utterly brazen.

Behavioral Policies

Class attendance is mandatory to passing this course. Participating in the course projects is also mandatory. The projects will be given to the entire class to work on as a group unless specified otherwise. Students will be expected to give some lectures during the course.

There is no such thing as cheating in this course. If you can find something anywhere or ask someone and get a correct answer, use it.

Grading will be very simple. Since this is a graduate level course, +'s and -'s will not be given. The projects, lectures, and attendance will count 100% of the grade. There will be no exams in this course. You are free on Thursday, December 7th to enjoy life after CS 689-001 :-)

Textbooks, Readings, and Software

There is no formal textbook for this course. A collection of readings will be made available to the class and listed on the class web page. A particular book of interest will be

Dale B. Haidvogel and Aike Beckmann, Numerical Ocean Circulation Modeling, Imperial College Press, London, 1999. (Amazon.com sells this at roughly half of list price.)

You might want to buy a copy. However, do not buy any books before the first class. If you need a reference for numerical algorithms, I recommend the following:

John H. Mathews, Numerical Methods for Mathematics, Science and Engineering, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ (USA), 1992, ISBN 0-13-624990-6.

D. J. Tritton, Physical Fluid Dynamics, Oxford Science Publications, Claredon Press, Oxford, 1988.

R. S. Varga, Matrix Iterative Analysis, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1962.

Y. W. Kwon and H. Bang, The Finite Element Method Using MATLAB, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 1997.

I do not recommend buying them unless you use them a lot.

There will be no standard programming language used in the course. However, you may need to be able to read codes in Fortran (77 or yucky 90), Java, C, and C++. You will need to get a starter account on the University of Kentucky supercomputer ncx.uky.edu.

Cheers,
Craig C. Douglas

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