DEVELOPMENT OF COMPUTATIONAL MODULES FOR MATHEMATICS COURSES

INTRODUCTION

To educate students of mathematics in the intelligent use of computers as a tool, the UCSD Mathematics Department is introducing computing components into some courses. This initiative requires extensive development of new instructional computing modules.

INTEL: To assist this effort, through its Technology for Education 2000 program, INTEL generously donated some desktop computer systems to the Mathematics Department to be used in the development and testing of innovative instructional computing components for appropriate undergraduate and graduate Mathematics courses. To encourage the creative use of computing in graduate education and research, and the development of associated software, faculty and graduate students conducting research involving computational components are also encouraged to use these computer systems. The Mathematics Department is also a member of a group of departments that uses a Shared Curriculum Implementation Lab for the testing of computer modules in courses. The computer systems for this lab were donated by INTEL.

GENCORP FOUNDATION OF AEROJET: The programming for modules to be used in the courses Math 161, 286 and 294 was done by graduate student David Glickenstein under the supervision of Professors Michael Sharpe and Ruth Williams. This development work was made possible through a generous contribution to the UCSD Mathematics Department from the GenCorp Foundation of Aerojet.

SOME RELATED WEB SITES

GENERAL

  • INTEL Technology for Education 2000 at UCSD (Campus-wide web site)

    COURSES

  • Math 21C (Spring 1999), Calculus and Analytic Geometry for Science and Engineering
    In this undergraduate course taught in Spring 1999 by Professor R. J. Williams, the students are encouraged to use Mathematica or Matlab for visualization of curves and surfaces in three dimensions. The shared INTEL lab (which has Mathematica installed) is being used by those students wishing to use Mathematica. In future years, both Mathematica and Matlab will be available in the shared INTEL lab.
  • Math 161, An Introduction to Mathematical Computing
    This undergraduate course provides an introduction for mathematics majors to the use of Mathematica as a computational tool. Various Mathematica modules have been developed and tested for this course which will use the shared INTEL lab in future years.
  • Math 168A, Numerical Methods in Mathematical Finance. This undergraduate course uses the INTEL shared lab and makes extensive use of Mathematica, Excel, and web access on the INTEL machines.
  • Math 286, Stochastic Differential Equations
    This graduate level course uses computer modules for performing symbolic manipulations in stochastic calculus and for numerically approximating the solutions of stochastic differential equations. These modules make extensive use of Mathematica. Development and testing of these modules used the Mathematics Department INTEL systems and this class used the INTEL shared lab in Fall 1999.
  • Math 294, Introduction to the Mathematics of Finance
    This graduate level course uses the stochastic calculus modules developed for Math 286 as well as modules specific to finance. This course used the INTEL shared lab in Winter 1999 and 2000.

    RESEARCH

  • Mathematics Graduate Student, Rob Ellis has been using the INTEL computer systems to investigate conjectures for graphs (click on current projects and see ``Listening to graphs" for example).