CPS 111
Computational Modeling for the Sciences
Spring 2008

CPS 111 Home

Readings

The following textbook provides a skeleton for this course:

• Frank R. Giordano, Maurice D. Weir, and William P. Fox.
  A First Course in Mathematical Modeling.
  Third Edition, Thomson, 2003.

Additional readings and notes will be made available as needed.

Supplemental Notes

• General remarks
• Linear, deterministic, stationary, discrete, deterministic dynamic systems. (Updated on 1/28/08). A zip file with related Matlab software is also available
• Introduction to stochastic dynamic systems
• Discrete probabilities
• Markov chains. A zip file with related Matlab software is also available
• Linear programming. Matlab files crop.m and diesel.m implement the two examples
• Thanks to a variant of the Birkhoff-von Neumann theorem, the game of Sudoku, which is a linear, binary programming problem, can also be solved by linear programming, that is, by replacing the restriction x in {0, 1} with the constraint x in [0, 1]. This is done in the Matlab function sudoku.m . The file testSudoku.m contains a sample run of this code.
• Stochastic sampling.
• Goodness of fit.

Software

All programming will be done in Matlab. Prior knowledge of this language is useful but not required, as recitations will bring you up to speed on it. The following (optional) small booklet is a useful companion if you are starting with Matlab from scratch:

• Timothy A. Davis and Kermit Sigmon. MATLAB Primer. Seventh Edition. Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2005.

Matlab is available at Duke on a large number of computer labs managed by Duke's Office of Information Technology (OIT). This software package is usually available under Linux. If you wish you can purchase your own copy of the software at the Mathworks Store online. For intensive graphics displays, your best option is to sit directly at the computer running Matlab. If you use the software remotely, it is best to turn off the Java interface to speed up the experience. To do so, run Matlab as follows from the Linux prompt:

matlab -nojvm

Please contact the OIT Help Desk for problems using or connecting with their computers or starting Matlab. Contact the Mathworks Support group for issues installing their software on your own computer.