Mth 355 is required for all math majors but it may be of interest to students in science and engineering.
Mth 355 is a new course (Fall 2001) and is not yet cast in stone. You are expected to be flexible and to tolerate changes in the course plan as we go along. If you wish to make serious suggestions concerning the course plan, your well-thought-out contributions will be very welcome, but first you should be aware of the overall course vision:
Course vision: This course is an introduction to some of the basic structures of discrete mathematics and an introduction to Maple and/or MatLab. Basic ideas of set theory, combinatorics (counting), and graph theory will be presented. Applications, or experiments, from these areas may form the basis for projects using Maple or MatLab.
Most (perhaps all) Wednesdays we will meet in Kidder 108 for a two hour session in the MLC lab. Projects will be provided for you to download in the lab.
Mth 355 is, in part, a programming course, but you will not be required to produce anything overly complicated (one of the advantages of using truly high-level languages). In some cases I will even provide you with the needed code, but you will have more fun if you write your own.
Maple: See Maple .
Matlab: Matlab, matrix laboratory, is used to obtain numerical solutions to mathematical problems. Its primary (really only) data type is the array and it is its ability to manipulate arrays directly that gives it most of its power. You may find the brief description of a small part of Matlab in Mth 355 Matlab Introduction useful. Matlab is available in many campus computer labs, especially in the Engineering School. It is also available in the lab in the MLC Lab.
Notes: Professor Robert Higdon, OSU Mathematics Department, has written some very nice notes on using Matlab and Maple (and also Mathematica) and has kindly consented to my posting them here. These are PDF files. You will need Acrobat Reader or other suitable software to read or to print the notes.
| TOP | HOME | Mth 355 Documents |