Ed Bueler
elbueler@alaska.edu    x7693
Office: Chapman 301C (hours here)
Class time: MWF 1:10--2:10pm
Classroom: Reichardt 204
Text: Trefethen and Bau, Numerical Linear Algebra, SIAM Press 1997.

Syllabus and Advertisement

A	matrix/vector manipulations
B	abstract and geometric linear algebra
C	SVD
D	QR and least squares
E	conditioning and stability
F	systems of equations
G	computing eigenvalues
H	iterative methods

MATLAB/Octave/pylab:

• comparison handout (PDF)
• ortho.m  ortho.py
  
• hello.m   hello.py
• mgs.m   mgs.py

LINKS:

• Matlab: great but not free.  Available at UAF through OIT-maintained site license.
• old Matlab/Octave help page
• Octave: (http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/) is a reliable free alternative to Matlab.  Octave should work exactly the same as Matlab for this class.  Linux: use package manager.  Windows and MacOSX: see http://octave.sourceforge.net for binaries.
• pylab = python + ipython + scipy + matplotlib:  Packages scipy and matplotlib, and the ipython shell, allow the powerful language Python can do everything needed for this class.  Recommended if you already use Python.
  
• Cleve Moler, The World's Largest Matrix Computation
• I find the PBS NOVA episode Why the Towers Fell very interesting for what it says about computer modeling in the 1970s and 1980s.  At that time, models of the combined effect of fast moving fluid and fire, and the effects on fireproofing of steel structures, was beyond the abilities of numerical simulations available to engineers.  (See the transcript of this NOVA episode and search for "mathematical models".)
  

Texts for related courses:

• Golub & van Loan, Matrix Computations
• Higham, Accuracy and Stability of Numerical Algorithms

Background books:

• Strang, Linear Algebra and Its Applications
• Moler, Numerical Computing with MATLAB
• Burden & Faires, Numerical Analysis
• Press et al, Numerical Recipes

Some readable papers:

• Axler (1995), Down with determinants!
  
• Golub and Kahan (1965), Calculating the singular values and pseudo-inverse of a matrix
  
• Householder (1958), Unitary triangularization of a nonsymmetric matrix
  
• Moler (2003), 19 dubious ways ... 25 years later
• Page, Brin, et al (1999), The PageRank citation ranking
• Rice (1966), A theory of condition
  
• Townsend and Trefethen (2013), Gaussian elimination as an iterative algorithm
• Turing (1948), Rounding-off errors in matrix processes
  
• Wilkerson (1960), Householder's method for the solution of the algebraic eigenproblem