CSE 1541: Computing for the Physical Sciences

Winter 2013-14

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Home

Calendar

Course Syllabus

Course Policies

Textbook

Useful Links

Course Syllabus

Instructor

Students must attend the labs for which they are registered (to avoid having insufficient computers for students to write the tests).

Description

This course introduces students to computer-based problem solving techniques that can be used to approach problems in the physical sciences, such as answering questions that require numerical computation, as well as basic analysis of experimental data sets and simple statistical simulations.

An integrated procedural programming, data analysis, and data visualization platform such as MATLAB (or its open-source equivalent OCTAVE) will be used to introduce computational elements. Topics will include:

1. Overview of the platform and computational accessories
2. Fundamentals of the platform, including operational syntax
3. Data types (including cell arrays)
4. Data file input/output
5. Data statistics
6. Basic and advanced plotting of data, including surface and contour plots
7. Procedures and control structures, including syntax, conditional evaluation statements (IF-ELSE), and loop programming (nested FOR loops, WHILE loop)
8. Code vectorization
9. User-defined functions
10. Advanced functions (including nested and recursive functions and sorting)
11. Simple matrix methods (systems of linear equations)
12. Random numbers, and simple Monte-Carlo simulation (area estimation with statistical error assessment)
13. Data acquisition

Prerequisistes: MATH1013
Co-requisites: PHYS1010, PHYS1410, or PHYS1420; and MATH1021 or MATH1025 Course Credit Exclusion: CSE1560, CSE1570

Textbook

Please see the textbook section of the course website.

Format

2 hours of lectures and 3 hours of labs per week.

The labs occur in the Prism teaching laboratories in the Lassonde building. A typical lab will focus on implementing solutions to programming problems with some or all of the work submitted at the end of the lab (and and remaining work submitted at a later date that will be specified during the lab). The lab problems will be made available at the start of the scheduled lab. The different lab sections may not necessarily be working on the same problems each week.

The Prism teaching labs use CentOS Linux as the operating system.

Evaluation

Students may view their grades using the ePost system. All grades distributed via ePost are unoffical and are subject to review by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. A student's final grade will be expressed as a letter grade.

Click here for further details on the University's grading schemes.

Tests

Tests are held in the Prism teaching labs during the regularly scheduled lab. Tests may include both written questions and programming questions that are adminstered under labtest mode. Labtest mode is a special test environment within the lab where most network services have been disabled. Different lab sections can expect to have different versions of the test. Tests are marked by the teaching assistants and contribute to the final grade as described above.

Exam

The exam will be conducted similarly to the tests. The exam will take place during the scheduled examination period at the end of term at a time determined by the Registrar.

Academic Honesty

Students are expected to understand and follow the guidelines for academic honesty described in this document.

Counselling and Disability Services (CDS)

Students requiring accommodation for the written midterm or exam should follow the normal procedure for accommodated alternative tests and exams.

For labtests, students registered with CDS should contact the instructor to arrange for accommodated alternative labtests. Do not submit requests for accommodated labtests through the Registrar's Office.