Intro to Scientific Computing PHYS 27/193 Physics Department University of the Pacific

Week 1 (18-24 May)

Introduction

• Welcome
• The Scientific Computing Environment
  • Homework 1: What is Scientific Computing

Cygwin

• Pre-Installation
• Installation
• Post-Installation
• What did I just get?
  • Homework 2: Test your installation

Week 2 (25-31 May)

Introduction to the Unix world

• Moving around
• Copy, Move/Rename, and View Files
• I/O Flow and the Pipe
  • Homework 3: Moving around in Unix

Editors

• A Text Editor
• Learning More About Emacs
• Intermediate Emacs
  • Homework 4: Using Emacs

Week 3 (1-7 June)

Gnuplot

• Scientific Visualization/Gnuplot
• More fun with Gnuplot
  • Homework 5, HW 5 Solution
• 3-D plots
• Plotting Data from a File

• User Defined Functions
• Fitting Functions to Data
• Fitting Data II / the Using Command
• Saving and Printing
  • Homework 6, HW 6 Solution
• An Example: Theory and Experiment in Freefall

Week 4 (8-15 June)

Latex for Scientific Publications

The Xfig Drawing Program

• Using Xfig
  • Homework 9

Week 5 (15-22 June)

Remote Login and File Transfer

• SSH and SFTP
  • Homework 10

Symbolic Math and Linear Algebra

• Intro to Mathematica
• A taste of Octave
  • Homework 11

Programming

• Basic programming
  • Compiled code: C++
  • Scripted code: Perl