Math 310 - INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER ALGEBRA SYSTEMS

This page is at http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/gbrookf/math310/math310.html

Links:

• Mathematica homepage News, products, downloads, and more about Mathematica from Wolfram Research.
• Mathematica Support Tutorials, documentation and lots more about Mathematica.
• Hands-on Start to Mathematica: A video introduction to Mathematica from Wolfram. Part 1 and Part 2. Try them and let me know if they are useful.
• Midterm exam with answers.

Project Suggestions:

Here are some suggestions for projects for this course. If you want to do one of these, tell me right away so that other students don't pick the same project. If you don't want to do any of these, you are welcome to choose a different topic (with my approval).

• Random Walk
• Cluster (This one is hard!)
• Moon
• Riemann Sums
• Integer Sequences
• Koch Snowflake
• Young Diagrams
• Universal Product Code
• Random Polynomial
• Random Reciprocal Polynomial
• Sierpinski Triangle
• Sierpinski Square
• Catenary
• Tiling
• Nim
• 3x+1 Puzzle
• GPA
• Clock
• Chaos
• Roots of Derivatives of Polynomials
• Game of Go
• Moire Patterns
• Sudoku Grid
• Cafe Wall Illusion

Some policies and other info:

• Your project is due on the day of the final exam, December 9, 2009. Please submit via email to my address: gbrookf@calstatela.edu.
• In your report, you should explain what your project does, how it works, the purpose of each command that you write, etc.
• You will be graded on the work that you do. Accordingly, you will need to explain in your report what you did that is different than what other people have done before. It is okay to use Mathematica commands/notebooks/ideas that you have downloaded from the internet or elsewhere, but it is not okay to do this without citing the source.

Lessons:

Quizzes:

SYLLABUS

Instructor:

Prerequisites: Math 206 with minimum grade of C.

WARNING: This may be the last time Math 310 will be offered. It will change to Math 210 with more or less the same course content. This new course will not count as an upper division elective in the BS or BA, but it will replace CS201 as a required course in these degree programs. When students of this Math 310 class graduate, they will have the CHOICE of using this Math 310 as an upper division elective or as a substitute for CS 201 BUT NOT BOTH. You will need to discuss this with the undergraduate advisor when you apply for graduation.

Textbook: There is no required textbook.

Course Material: In the first part of the course you will learn Mathematica basics, such as operations, number types, how to get help, etc. We will also do a "tour" of some built-in functions, covering basic symbolic manipulations and the many ways to work with and graph data. In the second part of the course you will learn how to program your own functions, using the built-in functions. Overall, at the end of the course you should be able to use Mathematica for your courses and also be able to do some basic programming.

The course will be based primarily on Mathematica notebooks that Dr. Heubach and I have developed. These notebooks will be posted at this web site for downloading.

Mathematica 6 is installed in all open access labs on campus. To use these computers you will need to have an NIS account. To get one, go to the ITS office located in Library South.

If you want to purchase the student version of Mathematica so that you can work from home, you can do so online. There are various new pricing options: $44.95 (6 months), $69.95 (12 months), but if you can afford it, I suggest you get the full student license ($139.95) rather than the limited-time version. All versions can be purchased for Windows, MacOS and Linux. The website for downloads is http://www.wolfram.com/products/student/mathforstudents/licenses.html.

You can download the Mathematica Player for free from Wolfram: http://www.wolfram.com/products/player/. This allows you to READ Mathematica notebooks only --- not create them. May be worth having at home to read course material even if you don't want to buy Mathematica itself.

Homework/Quizzes: There will be regular homework assignments (available on the web at the end of each lesson). It will not be collected or graded. Instead, most Wednesdays, there will be a quiz based on the homework and lectures since the previous quiz. When I calculate your final grade I will drop the lowest quiz score.

Project: There will be one project. These projects will focus on combining several functions to form a larger whole.

Exams:

• Midterm Exam: Wednesday, October 28, during regular class time. The exam will cover questions from the first part of the course (use of built-in functions).
• Final Exam: Wednesday, December 9 from 8:00-10:30.

Grades: Your final grade will be determined from the exams, project and quizzes with the following weights:
Project: 25%
Quizzes: 15%
Midterm exam: 25%
Final Exam: 35%