Math 151A

Announcements:

• FINAL'S WEEK:
  • Some notes about the solutions I wrote for the review problems Prof. Murphy suggested (I found some mistakes after some of you had made copies, so if you made copies yesterday, 12/12, before 3 you may want to take a look at this):
    • The sections at the top of each page may be incorrect. However, the page numbers are correct. So, the higher the page number the higher the section should be. For instance, if page number n has section 6.1 at the top and page number n+1 has section 4.4, chances are that the section in page n+1 is 6.1 or higher.
    • Section 4.3, Problem # 10: the degree of precission is n=2, and not n=1 as I initially indicated.
    • Section 4.4, Problem # 7(a): n should be taken >= 2169; for the Composite Trapezoidal rule n can be even or odd.
    • Section 6.1, Problem # 5: I did # 6 by mistake. #6 is harder, so if you can do it, you can do # 5 (stop by my office on Friday if you want to check your solution for # 5).
    I corrected my solutions as I found the mistakes, so they should be almost correct by now.
  • I still have an office hour on Friday (see below).
  • GOOD LUCK IN THE FINAL.
  • OFFICE HOURS during FINALS WEEK (12/10-12/14):
    • Tuesday from 11 to 12.
    • Wednesday from 1.30 to 2.30.
    • Friday from 10 to 12.
  • FINAL REVIEW: The review session for the final will be held at MS 6229 on Wednesday, December 12, from 10 to 12 (the final exam is scheduled for Friday, December 14, from 3 to 6 p.m.)
  • Solutions for practice problems suggested by Prof. Murphy will be available outside my door on Tuesday, December 11, by noon (remember that you need to make copies of those solutions and RETURN them so others can do the same.)
• Week 1:
  • Homework 1 is now due on Friday (10/05), drop it in my mailbox before 4.00.
  • I will be holding extra office hours at the PIC Lab (BH 2817) on Thursday from 3 to 4 and Friday from 10 to 11.
  • I couldn't hold the office hour today (Friday) from 10 to 11, I'll make it up on Monday 10 to 11 at the PIC Lab. If you expected to finish the hw this morning at the lab and you couldn't, you can give it to me on Monday. Sorry for the inconvinience.
• Week 2:
  • Homework 2 is due on Wednesday (10/10), that way we can cover some of the material during discussion.
• Week 4:
  • REVIEW SESSIONS for the midterm have been scheduled at the following times (I will post the locations as soon as they are confirmed):
    • Thursday 10/25 from 1 to 2.
    • Friday 10/26 from 3 to 4.
    I plan to cover the same material during both sessions, so you only need to attend one of them.
  • Links to mathematical software: check my main page for a list of links to mathematical software.
• Week 6:
  • My office hour on Friday Nov. 9 (PIC Lab) needs to be changed due to a schedule confict with an exam. I will hold it from 11 to 12 (same location).

Solutions (in .ps format) and Hints for Selected Homework Problems:

• Homework 1:
  • Solution to Problem 11(b) in Section 2.2.
  • Hint for Problem 6 (a) in Section 2.3: You don't need to program Newton's method (you can do it if you want), Mathematica has a function FindRoot[eqn,{x, a, b}] that is exactly Newton's method. This function finds the roots of eqn in the interval [a, b] using Newton's method.
  • Hint for Problem 25 (a) in Section 2.3: solve or fsolve won't return an answer, but an error message. That's ok, you don't need to turn in anything else. However, if you want, you can try FindRoot in Mathematica, and you will get an answer.
• Code for Newton's Divided Differences. This piece of code prompts the user for a set of data points, (x_i, f(x_i)), and computes Newton's Divided Differences table. The table is returned as a matrix whose first and second columns hold the x and f(x) values of the data points respectively. The elements in the first row (colums 2 to N+1) are the coefficients of Newton's interpolating polynomial. The code is written to work in Scilab, but it should work in Matlab with minor syntax modifications (you also need to change the file extension from .sci to .m)

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