The final grade will be calculated as follows:

• 50% Homework
• 25% Midterm Exam (in class, Monday June 16)
• 25% Comprehensive Final Exam (in class, Tuesday July 8)

Plus (+) and Minus (-) letter grades may be given on the final grade.

Homework assignments and due dates will be announced in class and are subject to change.

All homework should be turned in on paper, stapled (no paper clips), with each problem clearly marked, e.g., as #1, #2, etc. All results must be fully justified and all steps that were taken to arrive at the final result should be shown. Any calculations done on the computer must include copies of all code (programs) used to generate the results, not just the answers.Final answers should be clearly marked and indicated.

• Full credit if turned in on time.
• 10% deduction for each day late.
• Consequence of missing even a single homework: Do the math.

While I encourage people to work together and discuss the homework, I also expect that each student will turn in their own work. There will be a penalty if different students turn in what are basically copies of the same work.

You are encouraged to use the Mathematica notebooks (below, on this web page); or programs provided at the author's web site; or the programs supplied on the program disk to the 7th edition (zip-file or tar.gz or iso.tar.gz), to complete the homework assignment. You should include the output of all programs and clearly indicate in your assignments any programs that you do use.

Is required and your grade will be penalized if you miss too many classes

The class size is currently limited to 25 students.

There are no "computer projects" in this class. However, there is a lot of homework and some if it is better done on the computer.

Nearly all homework problems can be done either on the computer or by hand. Many of them will be significantly easier if you use the computer. Whenever you begin a homework problem your first thought should be: "Can I find an easier way to do this using the computer?"

You may do your assignments using any computer language. All of the algorithms in the textbook (7th edition, not the 8th edition) are already implemented in a number of languages on the program disk and on the textbook website (Mathematica, MatLab, Maple, Java, Fortran, C, etc.) and you are encouraged to use these programs for your assignments

The lecture notes will be updated over the course of the semester as errors found & corrected. Date of last revision: 29 June 2008

The class notes are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Richard Burden and J. Douglas Faires
Numerical Analysis, Brooks Cole.
8th Edition. $138.95 $189 !@&&$  They increased the price again!

Don't buy this book unless you're loaded!

Visit Publisher's web site

Do a price comparison at isbn.nu

Vist Author's (Faire's) web site (with program downloads)

The 7th edition is perfectly good, and you can probably find a really cheap copy on the internet. It's fine with me if you use the earlier edition. [I have a number of copies I can loan people for a $20 fully refundable security deposit, while they are waiting for their text to be delivered in the mail, or for the entire semester. If you "misplace" the book then you "lose" the security deposit. ]

Find a copy of the 7th edition of Burden and Faires on the internet ...