Introduction

1. The subject of the course is the numerical methods which are routinely used in modern physics. The algorithms will be discussed at the lectures. The students shall implement (some of) the discussed algorithms using a programming language of their choice.
2. About programming languages. Compiled and interpreted languages. Libraries: Netlib.org and GSL (GNU Scientific Library).
3. The students can choose their favourite programming language for the exercises. However, I can only promise practical help with Fortran77, C and Octave. For those who don't care much about languages Fortran77 should be a good choice.
4. The solutions to the exercises (that is the source code and the output) should be arranged into a web-page.
5. The UNIX programming environment. The make program. Text editors: mcedit, pico, jed, vi, emacs.

Exercises

1. Choose your programming language(s) for the exercises. The easiest should be Fortran77 on our LINUX server. The server should be delivered by Monday. In the mean time one can instead use da410.ifa.au.dk.
2. Prepare your web-page for the exercises. The easiest way is like that: login into da410.ifa.au.dk and

   mkdir ~/public_html
   mkdir ~/public_html/numeric
   echo 'under construction...' > ~/public_html/numeric/home.htm
   chmod -R go+rx ~/public_html
   

   ~/public_html/numeric should then be the place for your solutions to the exercises. Email me the address of your web-page.
3. Make a Hello-World program (a program that prints Hello-World on the screen) in your programming language.
4. Make a program to calculate the sums

   Sup(N) = ∑i=1...N (1/i)

   Sdown(N) = ∑i=N...1 (1/i)

   in single and double precision. Compare S_up and S_down for N=1000000. Explain the difference.

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   "Copyleft" © 2001 D.V.Fedorov (fedorov@ifa.au.dk)