MATH 481/581 56937 BASIC COMPUTING TECHNOLOGY

Fall 98: Monday/Wednesday 2:00-2:50 pm, Math Rm 102

Course Background

This course is meant to teach you to get the most out of computers as a tool for research, communication, and education. The course is designed as a "how NOT to read this manual" for all sorts of common software. If you use computers and you find root canals more pleasant than reading dreary software manuals, this is the course for you. The philosophy is quite simple: we will not teach you about how these software packages work, only how to use them (and we won't make any apologies for that). We prefer to cover a lot of packages rather than a few in great detail (no apologies for this, either). We cover packages not because they are better or worse than other comparable packages, but because they are most common (Bill Gates has more money than you or I). At the end of this course we hope you agree with our basic tennet: all computer tools are equally terrible...a good user has the good taste and the expertize to use the best features of them all.

Prerequisites. Should you take this course?

This course is open to graduate students, upper level undergraduate students, faculty. Space is limited. There are no computing or mathematics prerequisites. This is not a course on computational methods or numerical analysis. This is a great course to highlight in your job and graduate school application. The skills learned in this course are in high demand, and will save you, your employer, or thesis advisor, priceless time.

Course Outline

The purpose of this course is to introduce the students to some basic computer-based tools in science and engineering. It covers both UNIX and Windows-based environments. The course should enable you to be comfortable on any computer platform, rather than on any one specific one. Topics will be selected from:

Computing Resources in the math department and on campus.

The man page and other sources of help.

Unix: Basic Commands, simple scripting.

Windows 95 (MS WORD, POWERPOINT, EXCEL, EDITORS, ACROBAT)

Windows NT

Shells: csh, tcsh.

X-Windows: fvwm, twm, xterm. X applications.

Internet: Netscape(HTML), Email, FTP, Telnet.

Editors: vi, Emacs.

Matlab

Basic Fortran and c.

GAP

Symbolic Computation: Maple, Mathematica

SPlus

Document Formatting: LaTeX2e, TeX, amsTeX, SliTex, etc.

More Libraries: Netlib, Slatec, Lapack, Eispack.

Graphics: PostScript, Tecplot, avs, xmgr.

Compiling and Linking codes

Others: either C++ (object-oriented programming), or Fortran 90.

Basics of Perl and awk.

Debugging and Performance Analysis tools.

Basics of Parallel Computing.

Text or Reference Books:

There is no text or reference books. Class lecture notes are available by clicking here .

Instructors: Prof. Juan M. Restrepo and Dr. Mark Hays

Office: Math Bldg 707. Phone: 621-4367.

Juan Restrepo, email: restrepo@math.arizona.edu

Mark Hays, email: hays@math.arizona.edu

VIRTUAL OFFICE HOURS

The Mathematics computer lab: Located in Math 226.

CCIT CLUSTER

CCIT Locations and Hours

Computer Accounts

Class Notes

Homeworks and Grading:

There will be 4 to 5 homework assignments. There are three choices for homework 5. The grading of the homeworks and the preparation of model solutions will be shared by students enrolled for this course. No exams. Course grade: 80 % on homeworks + 20 % on grading of homeworks and preparation of model solutions.

Homework Answers (Links made after assignment is handed in)

IMAGINE IF INSTEAD OF CRYPTIC, GEEKY TEXT STRINGS, YOUR COMPUTER PRODUCED ERROR MESSAGES IN HAIKU...

Course, created by J. Restrepo, 1-20/96