Computing Information

There are many computing resources available that will aid in your exploration and understanding of differential equations. The main software packages the we recommend are

• Matlab
• Maple
• Mathematica

All can be found in the general computing labs on campus and available for purchase at significantly reduced rates for students. Throughout the course we will reference these various software packages when applicable.

Matlab is used extensively in the scientific computing community, is fairly easy to learn, and quite robust offering packages for visualization, numerical linear algebra, numerical differential equations and limited sybolic computation. For primers on matlab, we recommend:

• Getting Started, by The Mathworks
• Matlab Tutorial, by the University of Colorado
• Matlab Tutorial, by Brown University
• Matlab Tutorial, by Michigan Tech

Maple is primarily a used for symbolic computation and competes more with Mathematica. It can be used for plotting and easily finding analytic solutions. Here are some helpful tutorials:

• Helpful Maple Commands, by ?
• Maple Tutorial, by Maplesoft
• Maple Tutorial, by Seattle CCC
• Getting Started, by the University of Indiana
• Differential equations tutorial, by USC and Maplesoft
• Differential Equations worksheets site, by Maplesoft
• First Order ODEs Worksheet, by RMIT
• Second Order ODEs Worksheet, by RMIT

Mathematica is widely used in education and has an extensive help network. Some tutorials include:

• Basic Mathematica, by the University of Colorado
• Mathematica Examples, by the University of Colorado
• Mathematica Tutorial, by Colgate University

I will give a tutorial on the following dates:

The intent of these sessions is to learn the basics of the application. Please bring questions if you have them. Also, these are not mandatory, but will be quite helpful (I hope!). Arrive late or leave early...it is suppose to be informal. With the computer lab available, we will go through some prepared worksheets and work interactively on them together. See you there!

Find the Maple solution from the tutorial here.

Homework # 5 is difficult. The tutorial may have helped some, but I have also added a number of comments in the .m file that we worked on. Find the Matlab .m with my comments here.

Problem 2 is also quite hard, but we can use the same techniques as we used in problem 1. Find the Matlab .m with my comments here. You will have to uncomment certain things to obtain the correct output for the assignment.