Numerical Methods is one of the most practically useful courses in applied mathematics a student of science or engineering may ever take. This is about techniques by which mathematical problems are formulated so that they can be solved with arithmetic operations, so the practical value of this discipline cannot be underestimated.

While there are many kinds of numerical methods, they have one common characteristic: they invariably involve large numbers of tedious arithmetic calculations. No wonder that with the development of fast and efficient computers the role of numerical methods in engineering problem solving has dramatically increased.

The Mini-Projects incorporated into this course are based on the algorithms considered in the lectures and implemented in MATLAB, that is a convenient vehicle for presenting the underlying numerical algorithms. For details, see the list of the corresponding MATLAB Procedures.

The projects are crucial for this course: they are dedicated to major course topics and deal with relevant applications. While focused on the common aspects, these projects also require a clearly individualized effort: each project team is expected to formulate and solve the problems from the areas of their professional interests/majors - the Project Instructions provide specific guidelines for this activity.