MA2501 - Numerical Methods - Spring 2015

Information

• 25.06: The individual grades for the course should be posted on StudWeb within a day or two. Here are some final statistics for the course and exam. Enjoy your summer vacation!
A B C D E F
3 3 11 4 4 10
Average exam problem score
Problem Average (%)
1 82
2a 55
2b 77
2c 53
3 17
4a 92
4b 37
5a 19
5b 43
5c 41
6 57
• 04.06: The final exam with suggested solutions is available here.
• 03.06: Just to make it clear: You must bring the note on fixed point iterations to the exam yourself. It is not included with the exam.
• 01.06: I've posted the continuation exam from 2013 on the Old exams page, as was requested in the Q&A session. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any last minute questions. Good luck with the exam!
• 28.05: I've updated the note on fixed point iterations to correct an inaccuracy in Theorem 10 for the case p=1. I also corrected some other minor typos. Please make sure you have the updated version of the note (uploaded at 10.20 am on 28.05). I apologize for any inconvenience caused by this.
• 22.05: The Q&A session prior to the exam will be held on Monday 1 June from 14:15-16:00 in room F2. Since we'll probably only have time to look at a limited number of exam problems after the Q&A, I encourage you to send me requests of topics you would like to see covered. Otherwise we'll do some problems from the continuation exam from 2013.
• 20.04: A suggested solution to the final exercise set, Exercise set 11, is now available. Task 5 has also been corrected (some useful additional information was added).
• 19.04: The final curriculum for the course has been posted.
• 17.04: There will be a Q&A session close to the exam where you can ask me any question about the course, including general questions about the exam. Afterwards we'll go through as much of an earlier exam set together as time permits. I've made a confidential poll to determine the time of this session. The time with the most votes by May 21 will be chosen. Please use your real name, and select all dates which you can attend.
• 17.04: The final lecture has been given. I'll still have office hours every Tuesday from 10-12 until the exam, so feel free to come by if you have questions regarding the course, be it the curriculum, exercises, etc. I probably won't turn you away if you come by outside these hours, but I'd appreciate it if you sent me an email first in this case.
• 17.04: I aim to hold the third and final meeting with the reference within the next couple of weeks. As before I encourage you to send feedback regarding the course to members of the reference group. Their contact information is listed here.
• 14.04: The results for the project have been posted on the project page.
• 13.04: The final exercise set, Exercise set 11, is now available, along with a suggested solution to Exercise set 10. Note that some of the later tasks will depend on material we'll go through on the last lecture Friday 17 April.
• 27.03: Updated the lecture plan according to the current progress.

Old information

• 07.04: Exercise set 10 is now available.
• 27.03: A suggested solution to Exercise set 9 is now available.
• 26.03: Based on feedback from the reference group regarding more problem solving and examples, I'll use at least the first hour in the two exercise sessions after the Easter break to go through some relevant problems, most likely former exam problems. If there are specific topics or problems you would like me to cover, I encourage you to send me an e-mail with suggestions.
• 23.03: See the Project page for a list of candidate numbers I've received projects from. If your number is not on the list, and you've handed in a project, contact me.
• 23.03: I aim to hold the second meeting with the reference group this week (week 13). I encourage you to send feedback regarding the course to members of the reference group. Their contact information is listed here.
• 22.03: Exercise 5 in Exercise set 8 has been corrected. In addition Exercise set 9 is now available, along with a solution to Exercise set 8.
• 20:03: Updated the lecture plan, according to the current progress.
• 19.03: Updated the project description. Changed a Greek symbol in the description of the face classification process at the end of the Appendix, to make the notation more consistent, and avoid confusion.
• 18.03: Updated the project description. Corrected a typo in task l) where the dimensions of the image matrices had been given in the wrong order. The images were stated as being 92x112 when they are 112x92.
• 17.03: Exercise set 8 is now available, along with a solution to Exercise set 7.
• 16:03: I've decided to delay the deadline for the project to Sunday 22 March at 24:00, to give those who need it the weekend to finish.
• 16.03: Updated the project description. Improved the suggestion for how to plot the eigenvectors in task l). You don't need to redo the plot if you did it the old way.
• 16.03: I've corrected a typo in the help text of qrStep.m.
• 16.03: Updated the lecture plan.
• 12.03: Since I've gotten a few questions about this: It is enough to hand in the functions you're explicitly asked to create (and any helper functions these may depend on) when you hand in the project. You don't need to hand in scripts you've used to run experiments etc.
• 10.03: Updated the project description. Just added a few minor clarifications, and corrected some typos I was made aware of. No major changes.
• 08.03: Exercise set 7 has been posted.
• 06.03: I will have additional office hours Monday and Thursday from 10-12, for the next two weeks, for help with the project. This in addition to the regular office hours on Tuesday from 10-12.
• 04.03: Updated the project description. Since task d) can be a little challenging, I've changed task e) and g) to no longer use Aitken acceleration. This so they no longer depend on having completed d). If you've already completed these tasks, you don't have to redo them. Just note that you're using Aitken acceleration in the report.
• 03.03: Updated the project description. Clarified the aforementioned hint to task d), to account for the situation when the eigenvalue is negative.
• 03.03: Updated the project description. Added a hint to task d), regarding Aitken acceleration.
• 02.03: Made some very minor changes to the LaTeX sample file.
• 02.03: A solution to Exercise set 6 has been posted. No exercise set this week since there was no lecture on Friday. Work on the project instead.
• 01.03: Added some help and useful information about LaTeX on the project page, for those who wish to use it for the report.
• 22.02: Exercise set 6 has been posted.
• 22.02: I was made aware of an error in the MATLAB code of the suggested solution functions lusolve and lusolve_long on the Exercises page. An absolute value was missing when computing the scaled pivots. This has now been corrected.
• 18.02: I have updated the project to correct some typos and minor inaccuracies, mostly regarding the background material. Also fixed an unfortunate error with the stopping criterion in task a) which caused the iteration to not report convergence for negative eigenvalues. Everything should be correct now, but do let me know if you find anything that you suspect could be an error, and check in from time to time to make sure you have the latest version of the project description.
• 18.02: There is no lecture next Friday, 27.02, since I'm away. I encourage you to use this time to read through the background material for the later tasks in the project.
• 18.02: The project has been posted. Don't be too intimidated by the number of pages. A lot of this is background material. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
• 17.02: Updated the lecture plan.
• 17.02: I discovered a few typos in the statement and proof of the error bounds of Banach's fixed point theorem in the note. This has been corrected. The issues were not present in the lecture on the subject.
• 17.02: A solution to Exercise 5 has finally been posted. There will be no exercise this week due to the project.
• 13.02: Since the project requires some material from the lecture on Wednesday 18.02, the project will be posted that day. I'll post it some time before the lecture, so people can start working on it in the exercise session if they want.
• 13.02: Updated the lecture plan to reflect the current progress.
• 13.02: Updated exercise 5. Included a necessary hint in task 1b.
• 08.02: Exercise set 5 is now available, along with a solution to Exercise set 4.
• 02.02: Exercise set 4 is now available, along with a solution to Exercise set 3.
• 26.01: Updated the lecture plan.
• 25.01: Exercise set 3 is now available, along with a solution to Exercise set 2.
• 21.01: I made a Q&A page to address questions that may come up about the course. The first question was regarding the use of MATLAB in the exercises.
• 18.01: Exercise set 2 is now available, along with a solution to Exercise set 1.
• 16.01: The reference group meets Wednesday 21 January. Please contact a member of the reference group if you have feedback regarding the course.
• 16.01: Updated the lecture plan, according to our current progress.
• 13.01: The location of the exercise class has been moved to EL4 (with the exception of week 5), starting this week, so we don't have to move to a different room after the lecture.
• 13.01: Full preliminary lecture plan is now available.