Fall, 2021
The goal of this one-semester graduate course is to provide you with skills in scientific computing—tools and techniques that you can use in your own research. You will learn to program using MATLAB, which is a high-level programming language with many libraries that provide a rich ecosystem for scientific computing. Western has a site license for MATLAB so you can install it on your own machine at no cost.
This term I will be teaching the course concepts using MATLAB, though occasionally I may also show you Python code and/or post sample code in Python alongside MATLAB.
The course is designed to achieve three goals:
In the first part of the course, which will likely occupy a large part of the semester, you will learn how to write code to solve problems and analyze data. We will make use of several online problem sets such as Project Euler and Advent of Code.
Here is a sketch of some of the topics we will likely cover in the course:
In the last part of the course we will cover one or more of the following advanced topics:
There are no prerequisites. Students will have varying levels of experience with programming. If you have never programmed before then you will have more to learn than students who have previous experience.
There will be one programming assignment each week. There will be no tests, quizzes or exams.
Students who are in emotional/mental distress should refer to Mental Health@Western http://www.uwo.ca/uwocom/mentalhealth/ for a complete list of options about how to obtain help.
Western is committed to achieving barrier-free accessibility for all its members, including graduate students. As part of this commitment, Western provides a variety of services devoted to promoting, advocating, and accommodating persons with disabilities in their respective graduate program.
Graduate students with disabilities (for example, chronic illnesses, mental health conditions, mobility impairments) are strongly encouraged to register with Accessible Education Western (AEW), a confidential service designed to support graduate and undergraduate students through their academic program. With the appropriate documentation, the student will work with both AEW and their graduate programs (normally their Graduate Chair and/or Course instructor) to ensure that appropriate academic accommodations to program requirements are arranged. These accommodations include individual counselling, alternative formatted literature, accessible campus transportation, learning strategy instruction, writing exams and assistive technology instruction.