MAT 331: Mathematical Problem Solving with Computers

Organizational Information

• About the course(pdf).
• 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)
• You can download maple for Windows and MacOS from softweb. If you want a version for Linux, ask me for details. The campus also has an ssh client for windows there, among other things.
• Here is one way to have remote graphical access to the mathlab.
• Maple Worksheets from each class are here.

Exercises:

• All problems (PDF).
  • First set (PDF) (expires by 2/28).
  • Second set (PDF) (expires 3/4), and extra stuff for exercise 9: electron.txt or worksheet for ex.9(right click).
  • Third set (PDF) (expires 3/11), and extra file expdata.txt for exercise 10.
  • Fourth set (PDF) (expires 4/1).
  • Fifth set (PDF) (expires 4/29).
  • Sixth set (PDF) (expires 4/31), and extra file subscrypt.txt for exercise 22.
  • Seventh set (PDF) (expires 5/13).
  • Eighth set (PDF) (expires 5/21).
  Since there were 30 problems assigned, the best 12 will be counted.
• To hand in an exercise, please use this page.

Projects

• Project 1(pdf) (due 3/11), and the associated data files. There is a data file for each student. If you like, you can use testcase.txt to check that your method matches what I expect. I got the following lines using that data:
  

  Vertical distance:	y=-.9343995080x+4.216828667
  Horizontal distance:	y=-.9967872482x+4.265104759
  Euclidean distance:	y=-.9639641657x+4.239706017

  Don't forget to explain what you are doing quite clearly. This counts as much as getting the correct answers.
• The due date for project 2 has moved to May 9.
  You have two choices for Project 2, either a qualitative study of a motorized glider, or several quantitative questions about the unpowered glider. Either is due on May 9.

  Should you choose to do the motorized glider project, you might want to look at my analysis of the case k=0.9, which is available as either a maple worksheet(right click) or web browsable. Feel free to crib whatever you want from it. Since the other project is more straight-forward, you're on your own.

• Project 3 is on cryptography and is due by May 21.
• To hand in your project, use the exercise submission page.