MAT331: Mathematical Problem Solving with Computers

Organizational Information

• About the course (also in pdf).
• The official list of office hours, contact info, and so on is here. However, other times are OK too; send an email or ask me. I am around most days, but always have lots of other commitments.
• The Course text, also in PDF.
• Chapter 0: Preliminaries (also PDF)
• Chapter 1: Curve Fitting (also PDF)
• Chapter 2: A Glider Model (also PDF)
• Chapter 3: Cryptography (also PDF)
• Chapter 4: Turtles and Fractals (also PDF)
• This semester, the class will be using Maple extensively. You can download maple for Windows, MacOS, or Linux from softweb. You can also use Maple at any SINC site, or via the Virtual SINC site.

Maple Worksheets

• Maple Worksheets from each class are here.
• You might find it useful to read about loading a file from the web into maple.
• A maple worksheet with the cryptography routines we wrote in class is called Crypto.mw (last updated 6 December 2019, 06:14 PM).

Exercises

• All problems (PDF).
  • First set (PDF) (problems expire 8/30 & 9/9)
  • Second set (PDF) (expires 9/16)
  • Third set (PDF) (expires 9/23)
  • Fourth set (PDF) (expires 9/30)
  • Fifth set (PDF) (expires 10/16)
  • Sixth set (PDF) (expires 10/21)
  • Seventh set (PDF) (expires 10/28)
  • Eighth set (PDF) (expires 11/21)
  • Ninth set (PDF) (expires 11/29)
  • Tenth set (PDF) (expires 12/4)
• To hand in an exercise, please use this page.

Projects

As described in the syllabus, there will be several projects. These will appear below once they are assigned.

• Project 1(pdf) (due 10/8) is related to least squares fitting. There are associated data files, with a data file for each student, named by NetID.
  Don't forget to explain what you are doing quite clearly. This counts as much as getting the correct answers.
• Project 2(pdf) (due November 12) is a qualitative study of motorized glider flight. You might want to look at my analysis of the case k=0.9, which is available as a maple worksheet. Feel free to crib whatever you want from it.
• Project 3(pdf) (due December 18) is on encryption.

To hand in your project, use the exercise submission page. You may either submit your project as a single maple worksheet, with the explanation and calculations together, or as a PDF file for the expository part and a separate maple worksheet.