Stellenbosch University
Applied Mathematics

Announcements

  • Due date for Assignment 3 postponed to April 22. Problems 4(b) and 8(b) have been dropped. (You can still submit them for a few bonus marks.)
  • New video to accompany Week 7 self-study: here
  • If you have questions on any Assignment, please send email. I will share my response with everyone. This will be done anonymously (that is, even if you think your question is trivial nobody will know :-)
  • MATLAB

    • This course assumes some previous experience with MATLAB (or Python).
    • MATLAB is now FREE for all SU students. Download instructions here.
      Alternatively, you can use MATLAB in your browser. (But this may be slower.)
    • Strongly recommended: complete the (free) online MATLAB Onramp as a refresher.

    Lecturer

    Timetable

    Tuesday 11:00 and 12:00; Wednesday 12:00

    Information Sheets

    • Information sheet available here.

    Notes

    Assignments

    Assignment Date out Date in Solutions
    Assignment 1 11/02/2020 25/02/2020 Solutions 1
    Assignment 2 25/02/2020 11/03/2020 Solutions 2
    Assignment 3 11/03/2020 22/04/2020 Solutions 3
    Assignment 4 Solutions 4
    Assignment 5 Solutions 5
    Assignment 6 Solutions 6

    Tests

    Test 1: Tuesday April 7, 11:00-13:00, A308 (closed book, closed notes) Postponed

    Test 1 will cover the material of Weeks 1-6 in the SCHEDULE box below.

    Excluded material:
    • Lecture slides chapter 2: pages 24, 28, 64, 70, 73-74, 84-85, 91, 96-100
    • Lecture slides chapter 3: pages 18, 24-25, 54-66

    Suggestions for preparation:
    • Study lecture slides and additional whiteboard notes
    • Study the text book and solve the exercises at the end of each chapter
    • Read further on each topic by consulting Wikipedia, MathWorld and other reputable Web resources
    • Work the practice exams below

    Schedule

    Week 1 (Chapter 2)
    • Linear systems; Existence and uniqueness of solutions
    • Vector and matrix norms

    Week 2 (Chapter 2)
    • Condition numbers. (Classroom demo of 11 Feb here)
    • Conditioning of linear systems. (Undergraduate slides: eng / afr)
    • Solving linear systems

    Week 3 (Chapter 2)
    • Gaussian elimination and LU factorisation (Classroom demo of 18 Feb here)
    • Pivoting
    • Stability of GE and the growth factor
    Week 4 (Chapter 2)
    • Complexity (operation count) of LU factorization and triangular solves
    • Symmetric positive definite matrices and Cholesky factorization
    • Band matrices and sparse matrices
    • Condition number estimation

    Week 5 (Chapter 3)
    • Overdetermined systems and the method of least squares (Undergraduate slides: eng / afr)
    • Derivation of the normal equations by differentiation and by geometry
    • QR factorization

    Week 6 (Chapter 3)
    • QR factorization by the Gram-Schmidt and modified Gram-Schmidt procedures.
    • Householder reflectors (additional note)
    • Givens rotations

    Week 7 (Chapter 4) Self-study summary here
    • Revision of eigenvalues/vectors and the eigenvalue decomposition
    • Special properties of eigenvalues/vectors for symmetric matrices; application to quadratic curves
    • Instability of the characteristic polynomial in f-p arithmetic, companion matrices