CCS110   Overview

Purpose

This is a course that is designed for incoming students who express an interest in the physical sciences, the biological and social sciences, mathematics, and computer science.  We wish to motivate the student toward exploring concepts that lie within a broad range of scientific fields with the aid of existing sofware packages.  In doing so the hope is that the student will become familiar with the techniques involved in computational problem solving in the sciences and social sciences.

Overview of the Course

Given any mathematical problem, whether it be real world or theoretical, there are two ways to approach a solution to the problem: analytically and numerically.  An analytical approach to a problem usually requires greater mathematical familiarity and deeper insight from an individual.  It takes the given problem and attempts to find a solution using various techniques of theory, such as those that comprise the Calculus.  Not every problem can be solved analytically, and even for those that can an analytical solution may not be practical to implement.  A numerical approach to a problem is a means of approximating the solution of the problem without requiring the sophistication of or the familiarity with the methods that may be required to find the exact solution of the problem.  Usually a numerical approach can be implemented even when an analytical approach cannot.

The design of this course is more directed for solving various real world problems by means of the numerical approach.  This will require that a student use what knowledge they already possess (along with a few new concepts) to arrive at the solution of a problem.

Software to be used

This course shall be incorporating the software language Mathematica^® for the purpose of investigating various numerical approaches to solving problems.  It is a powerful, high-level language that can be utilized to perform complex numerical routines usually with just a few commands.  It is also current and widely used, thus providing students with experience that they will find helpful as they continue with their educational pursuits.