Part I Computational Mathematics and Information Technology

Migration to Moodle

The material for this course has migrated to City University's Moodle system. The content here, which was used for the academic year 2009-10, is not being updated.

Practical Resit Exam, September 2010

In an attempt to overcome some of the difficulties encountered in the previous parctical examination, we have changed things a bit for the resit. Instead of using the standard configuration of the computers that is used in the laboratories, we will have a different set-up. The computers will not be attached to the internet. This means that you will not download the spreadsheet from the internet. Instead you will each be issued with a memory stick on which you will find the spreadsheet. At the end of the practical you should save your completed spreadsheet on the memory stick, and hand this in. If you open the file directly from the memory stick, then it will save on the memory stick by default.

As the computers will not be connected to the internet you will not be able to access the course web page. Instead you should have all the course files available already installed on your computer. The material will be accessible from a web page. This page, and the associated material that you will be able to access, can be viewed here.

Exams, Summer 2010

ActuarialScience students only take the practical exam, maths students take both the pactical and theory papers.

The theory paper will be on similar lines to those in the past. The practical excam will follow a similar line to the progress test and coursework, i.e. there will be a written paper with questions/tasks to be done using Derive/Minitab/Excel and you will be expected to submit a spreadsheet with your answers on CitySpace. We will try and ensure that we do not have the technical difficulties associated with the progress test. It would also help if you were familiar with ways of getting out of difficulties when you get stuck, for example when Excel seems to freeze (try escape or control-break).

Coursework 2010

Note: Some students have found new and imaginative ways of doing things wrong in the Excel part of the coursework. The checking software worked correctly for the dozen or so examples I used to originally check it, and for the couple of dozen that I had to check later which had errors that needed my personal intervention. I will look into these, and try and ensure that all get the correct marks. Check your CitySpace accounts over the next couple of days. You may find your marks being adjusted if you are one of these students.

Some of you may have had difficulties opening your report on the piece on cubic splines that I returned via CitySpace. Unfortunately I used the Microsoft software on a different platform to create these.a The Office 2007 there behaved in a different way to the version on my desktop, and saved .doc format files with a .docx file ending. I have stripped of the trailing x and resaved them on CitySpace.

I have returned the coursework asignments via CitySpace. I have written some general comments (which I may add to) about the coursework which can be found here. If you have any queries that are not explained in this handout then please email me.

Data needed for Worksheet 8

Excel spreadsheet with mark data

Progress test - January 2010

The exam was closed book. Any use of online material from the course was allowed, but it was recommended that students should not rely on this as the time taken to look things up would mean less time for answering questions.

Students were required to insert your answers question 2 to 5 on an Excel spreadsheet provided. Note: There were some problems with this test(!!!) I have tried to identify some of the main ones here .

Printed notes no longer available from the Maths Office (CM123)

This module was taught by Br Graham Bowtell, and we have relied heavily on his material. Although changes have been made through the year. The following are only available on-line:

Course Notes . A copy of this will be circulated shortly. An alternative version is available for the visually impaired.
Old Worksheets . This year's sheets are available below.

Worksheets

Note: Some instructions for using Excel were based on Office2003, and not Office2007 as installed on the laboratory computers. Instructions for Excel2007 can be found here.

Presentations from lectures

Weeks 1 and 2 and picture of Devil's staircase (continuous, zero gradient almost everywhere and increasing).
Week 3
Week 4 Root finding I: functions of one variable
Week 5 Root finding II: functions of one variable
Week 6 Root finding III: linear systems
Week 7 Root finding IV: nonlinear systems
Week 8-9 Excel Financial Functions
Week 9-10 Curve fitting
Week 9-10 Curve fitting
Week 11 Curve fitting - cubic splines
Week 12 Linear regression (Excel file used for linear regression)
Week 13 Linear regression for more than 1 independent variable (Excel file used)
Week 14 Fitting more general functions (Excel file used)
Week 15 Intro to Markov chains
Week 16 More Markov chains and Google
Week 17 Numerical Integrationa (plus an extra bit dropped from lectures for lack of time).
Week 18 Descriptive statistics - Minitab
Week 19 Other topics
Week 20 - no lecture.

Material from previous years

The web page of Dr Graham Bowtell contains more information and examples sheets that he used in his course. Students should look here if they need more material.