Subject: Numerical Methods Instructor: Dr.

Samir Shrestha
Course: MCSC202
Level: BE IInd Year/IInd Semester

Motivation
Why Do We Need Numerical Methods?

Mathematics is an elegant and precise subject: however when numerical answers are
required one sometimes needs to rely on approximate methods to obtain useable answers.
There are many problems which simply do not have analytical solutions, or those whose
exact solution is beyond our current state of knowledge. There are also many problems
which are too long (or tedious) to solve by hand. When such problems arise we can
exploit numerical analysis to reduce the problem to one involving a finite number of
unknowns and use a computer to solve the resulting equations.

The ever-increasing advances in computer technology have enabled many in science and
engineering to apply numerical methods to simulate physical phenomena. Numerical
methods are often divided into elementary ones such as finding the root of an equation,
integrating a function or solving a linear system of equations to intensive ones like the
finite element method. Intensive methods are often needed for the solution of practical
problems and they often require the systematic application of a range of elementary
methods, often thousands or millions of times over.

In the development of numerical methods, simplifications need to be made to progress

towards a solution: for example general functions may need to be approximated by
polynomials and computers cannot generally represent numbers exactly anyway. As a
result, numerical methods do not usually give the exact answer to a given problem, or
they can only tend towards a solution getting closer and closer with each iteration.
Numerical methods are generally only useful when they are implemented on computer
using a computer programming language.

The work starts with a description of how we could perform some very basic calculations
(that is, simply using the computer as a calculator). It then moves on to solving problems
which cannot, in practice, be solved by hand. Sometimes the solution of these problems
can become as intricate and involved as the original problems and requires almost as
much finesse and care to obtain a solution. There are several options available to us, both
in terms of language and also overall approach. In our course, we elect to express our
ideas in terms of the syntax of the computer package MATLAB. Once you have mastered
the syntax of MATLAB it will be easier for you to learn other languages, if you should
decide you need to.

Scientific Computing

Real-life problems in science, engineering and technology can be in general describe by a

mathematical model. This might be for example as set of differential equations, an
optimization or control problem and/or a statistical data analysis. Mostly, the arising
mathematical models are highly complicated and too complex to be solved analytically.

1
Hence, approximate numerical methods must be applied to provide approximate solutions
with the help of computer.
This course Numerical Methods with MATLAB focuses on finding the Roots of Non-
linear equations, Finding Interpolating Polynomials and Fitting the Curves, Numerical
Integrations, and Solving Ordinary Differential Equations.
Actually, scientific computing is not theoretically teachable but only practically
learnable, since programming mainly depends on the individual way of dealing with the
problems, thinking and structuring facts in a logical order as well as on personal
preferences and experiences. Thus, two programs written by two independent persons for
the same mathematical algorithm will always differ, There is no unique solution for a
programming task, Instead, the quality of a program is measure in terms of computation
time and number of operations. These independent parameters are strongly affected by
the used soft- and hard-ware due to the required data storage. A program running fast and
efficient in C might be very slow in MATLAB. The motto of any programming
languages is Learning by Doing. The development of an individual good
programming style requires a lot of practice.

In this introductory course, we deal with following topics:

Error in Numerical Calculations

Roots of Equations
Interpolation
Numerical differentiation and integration
Matrices and System of linear equations
Curve fitting
Solving Ordinary Differential Equations (IVP)

Moreover, there will be 2 hours computer Lab every week to work on MATLAB which is
a high-level computer language for scientific computing and data visualization built
around an interactive programming environment.

Recommended Text Books

1. Introductory Methods of Numerical analysis, S. S. Sastry, Prentice Hall of India

(PHI), 4th edition, 2005 (For theoretical part and numerical problems).
2. Numerical Methods using MATLAB, J. H. Mathews & K. D. Fink, Prentice Hall
of India (PHI), 4th edition, 2005 (For Matlab programming of the text Book 1)

Matlab Resources

1. Getting started with MATLAB, Version 6, Rudra Pratap, Oxford University Press,
2002.
2. MATLAB Programming, Y.K.Singh & B.B.Chaudhuri, Prentice-Hall of India
(2007).