Students in this course develop the necessary understanding and problem-solving skills needed to design, analyze, and implement numerical algorithms for solving problems in science and engineering. Particular emphasis is given to program design, including data structures, computational complexity, scientific computing environments (e.g., MATLAB), and high-performance software packages (e.g., BLAS, LAPACK).

The three credit hours for this course comprise two 75-minute lectures plus a 3-hour laboratory session per week. Laboratory instruction will focus on assigned computer programming exercises using the C language and the MATLAB application programming environment. A CS graduate student TA and Course Lecturer will provide laboratory instruction and aid students in mastering the computing environment (Dell Optiplex desktops running the Debian Linux operating system) and software (e.g., MATLAB, BLAS).

The field of Scientific Computing emphasizes the systematic study of computer utilization to solve broad classes of problems in science and engineering while accomplishing diverse objectives. The aim is to optimize the effectiveness of the computer as a tool in achieving specific goals. The field therefore provides a link between the computer and the physical world.

Some of the important questions that arise in the pursuit of this knowledge are:

• How should a scientific or technological problem be formulated so as to facilitate computer treatment?
• How can problem domains be represented by formal structures which lend themselves to computer processing?
• What types of computer architectures are most suitable for a specific problem?
• What algorithms provide the best trade-off among accuracy, speed and computational stability?
• What existing software tools offer the most promise?
• What are the specifications of new hardware and software systems to be developed?

  Reference: UCLA Computer Science Department webpage

CS 140 (Data Structures), MA 241 (Calculus III) or MA 247 (Honors: Calculus III), and MA 251 (Matrix Algebra).