Hunter Liu's Website

Math 151A (Summer 2024)

Instructor: Professor Ding Lingyun

Discussion Section Location: Boelter 5273
TA Office Hours: Thursdays at 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM in MS 2943

You can find a course description through UCLA’s registrar. Official course materials are available on BruinLearn.

The focus of this course is finding efficient algorithms to solve various types equations, either exactly or approximately. How do you solve a matrix equation like \(A\mathbf x = \mathbf b\)? How about nonlinear equations like \(\sin x = e^x\)? Not only does this entail knowing which algorithm to use, but it also entails analysing its runtime complexity, rates of convergence, and implemetation details.

We’ll be using MATLAB to implement many of the algorithms we study. UCLA students should have licenses provided by the university, and you can obtain an installation here.

We will be using the textbook Numerical Analysis by Burden and Faires, and we’ll sometimes do exercises from the book.

I’ll be uploading discussion notes and additional resources to this page as we go, so don’t worry if you have to miss a discussion! You’ll be able to see what we’ve covered here.

1. MATLAB Crash Course
2. Root-Finding Algorithms
3. Analysing Order of Convergence and Steffensen's Method
4. Lagrange Polynomials and Their Problems
5. Numerical Integration and Differentiation
6. A Note about Divided Differences
7. Gaussian Elimination and Matrix Factorisations