Posts

 

The sorry state of teaching ODEs

teaching
I’ve spent the last two spring semesters teaching ODEs (ordinary differential equations) to a total of about 170 biomedical and chemical engineering majors. The content is…
Jul 16, 2019
Toby Driscoll
 

Matlab vs. Julia vs. Python

computing
I’ve used MATLAB for over 25 years. (And before that, I even used MATRIXx, a late, unlamented attempt at a spinoff, or maybe a ripoff.) It’s not the first language I learned…
Jun 28, 2019
Toby Driscoll
 

New look, new tech

math
research
At long last, I’ve refreshed the look for this site. Previously it was based on a “Metro UI” style for HTML, which looked nice to me at the time. Actually it still looks…
Jun 27, 2019
Toby Driscoll
 

Jekyll for clicker questions

academia
computing
teaching
For a few years, I’ve been a fan of clickers (aka personal response systems) for large lecture sections. Clickers are a simple–and scalable–way to incorporate a little…
Feb 2, 2018
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau & MATLAB & Julia: Iterative methods

math
I’m going to wrap up the long-paused MATLAB versus Julia comparison on Trefethen & Bau by chugging through all the lectures on iterative methods in one post.
Feb 3, 2017
Toby Driscoll
 

It already has happened here

society and culture
I’ve just finished one of the most remarkable fiction reading experiences I’ve had in quite some time: It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis.
Dec 18, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau & MATLAB & Julia, Lectures 24-29: Eigenvalue stuff

computing
math
teaching
Part V of T&B is on dense methods for eigenvalue and singular value problems. For my course, this is the part of the text that I condense most severely. In part that’s due…
Oct 27, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau & MATLAB & Julia: Lectures 20, 21, 23: Solving square systems

computing
teaching
Three in one this time: Lecture 20, which is on Gaussian elimination / LU factorization, Lecture 21, on row pivoting, and Lecture 23, on Cholesky factorization. I mainly…
Oct 22, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau & MATLAB & Julia: Lecture 19, Stability of least squares

computing
math
teaching
Here are the notebooks in MATLAB and Julia.
Oct 11, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau & MATLAB & Julia, Lectures 12-13: Conditioning and floating point

computing
teaching
I’ve run into trouble managing gists with lots of files in them, so I’m back to doing one per lecture. Here are Lecture 12 and Lecture 13.
Oct 4, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau & MATLAB & Julia, Lecture 11: Least squares

computing
teaching
This week’s notebooks (MATLAB and Julia–now all lectures are together for each language) are about least squares polynomial fitting.
Sep 28, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau & MATLAB & Julia, Lecture 9: MATLAB

math
teaching
For today’s notebooks I got caught on a problem I anticipated in theory but failed to spot in practice for longer than I would like to admit.
Sep 20, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau & MATLAB & Julia, Lecture 8: Gram-Schmidt

computing
math
teaching
This lecture is about the modified Gram-Schmidt method and flop counting. The notebooks are here.
Sep 19, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau & MATLAB & Julia, Lectures 6-7

teaching
computing
Here are the Jupyter notebooks for Lecture 6 and Lecture 7. (I finally noticed that a Gist can hold more than one notebook…duh.)
Sep 16, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau & MATLAB & Julia Lecture 5: More on the SVD

computing
teaching
Notebooks are viewable for matlab and julia.
Sep 12, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau & MATLAB & Julia, Lecture 4: SVD

computing
math
teaching
The notebooks: matlab and julia.
Sep 12, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau & MATLAB & Julia, Lecture 3: Norms

computing
math
teaching
Here are the MATLAB and julia notebooks.
Sep 7, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau & MATLAB & Julia, Lecture 2

computing
math
teaching
Here are the matlab and julia notebooks.
Sep 2, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau, Lecture 1

computing
teaching
Have a look at the MATLAB and Julia versions of the notebooks for this lecture.
Sep 1, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Trefethen & Bau, via MATLAB and Julia

math
computing
teaching
This semester I’m teaching MATH 612, which is numerical linear and nonlinear algebra for grad students. Linear algebra dominates the course, and for that I’m following the…
Sep 1, 2016
Toby Driscoll
 

Why not Zoidberg?

math
society and culture
Something fun for Friday?
Jul 31, 2015
Toby Driscoll
 

showall

computing
I just scratched a MATLAB itch. So many times I’ve seen—and experienced myself—people popping open figure windows in MATLAB, then trying to juggle them and move them around…
Jul 30, 2015
Toby Driscoll
 

Data science? Data science!

academia
math
teaching
I just received a copy of SIAM News on a dead tree. It features a piece by Chris Johnson and Hans de Sterck about “Data Science: What Is It and How Is It Taught?” As usual…
Jul 30, 2015
Toby Driscoll
 

Length of papers

academia
math
Nick Trefethen has posted a wonderful graph showing how the average length of papers published in several SIAM journals has doubled over the last 40 years.
Jul 29, 2015
Toby Driscoll
 

Quantum weirdness

science
I’m a little late getting this news, but I’m fascinated by an experiment at Australian National University showing (once again) in a vivid way how strange the quantum…
Jul 24, 2015
Toby Driscoll
 

A retrospective look at college math

math
teaching

A former math undergrad reflects on what she wishes she had learned more about in college.

Jul 22, 2015
Toby Driscoll
 

Flipping experiences

teaching

Experiences with flipping the classroom in a numerical computation course.

Jul 20, 2015
Toby Driscoll
 

Promotion system

teaching

Can mastery-based learning work in a college math course?

Jul 17, 2015
Toby Driscoll
 

Bio Breakfast

math
research

How to do better at teaching without driving everyone crazy. Maybe.

Jul 14, 2015
Toby Driscoll
 

Grades and motivation

teaching

What even is a grade, anyway?

Jul 14, 2015
Toby Driscoll
 

Making continuous assessment work

math
teaching

How to do better at teaching without driving everyone crazy. Maybe.

Jul 13, 2015
Toby Driscoll
 

Addiction

math

Kids say the darndest things.

Jul 9, 2015
Toby Driscoll
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