A Gentle Introduction to Scientific Computing

Dan Stanescu, Long Lee

• Publisher: Chapman and Hall/CRC
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780429557934
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

Scientific Computation has established itself as a stand-alone area of knowledge at the borderline between computer science and applied mathematics. Nonetheless, its interdisciplinary character cannot be denied: its methodologies are increasingly used in a wide variety of branches of science and engineering.

A Gentle Introduction to Scientific Computing intends to serve a very broad audience of college students across a variety of disciplines. It aims to expose its readers to some of the basic tools and techniques used in computational science, with a view to helping them understand what happens "behind the scenes" when simple tools such as solving equations, plotting and interpolation are used.

To make the book as practical as possible, the authors explore their subject both from a theoretical, mathematical perspective and from an implementation-driven, programming perspective.

Features

• Middle-ground approach between theory and implementation.
• Suitable reading for a broad range of students in STEM disciplines. Could be used as the primary text for a first course in scientific computing.
• Introduces mathematics majors, without any prior computer science exposure, to numerical methods.
• All mathematical knowledge needed beyond Calculus (together with the most widely used Calculus notation and concepts) is introduced in the text to make it self-contained.

The erratum document for A Gentle Introduction to Scientific Computing can be accessed here.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Vectors and Matrices
• 3 Basics of MATLAB®
• 4 Solving Nonlinear Equations
• 5 Systems of Equations
• 6 Approximation of Functions
• 7 Numerical Differentiation
• 8 Numerical Optimization
• 9 Numerical Quadrature
• 10 Numerical Solution of Differential Equations
• Appendix A Calculus Refresher
• Appendix B Introduction to Octave
• Appendix C Introduction to Python
• Appendix D Introduction to Julia
• Appendix E Hints and Answers for Selected Exercises
• Bibliography
• Index