Cheg 258 - Lecture Notes - Jan. 22, 2001

Announcements

• Reminder: The Matlab tutorial/discussion session will be held on Monday 1/22/01 (that's today, folks) in room 140 DBTL from 6:00PM to 7:30PM or so. Please bring your questions! We will also be taking class pictures too!

Class notes

The main points of the lecture were

• Numerical Errors

Goals:

• Distinguish between algorithm errors and roundoff errors.
• Estimate the machine precision of your computer.
• Calculate the numerical error of a finite difference formula for derivatives.

Reading

• The class notes
• Recktenwald, chapter 5
• Kahaner, Ch. 2.

Questions of the Day

• If I want to use a standard traffic light to represent an integer, how many integers can I represent?
• What is the general formula for the Taylor series expansion of a function f(x)?

Matlab Example Codes

example 3