[Beowulf] Teaching Scientific Computation (looking for the perfect text)

[Andrew Piskorski]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2007 at 12:33:43PM -0600, Nathan Moore wrote:
> I regularly teach a college course in a physics department that deals with
> scientific computation.  After students take the course, I expect that
> they'll be able to write simple "c-tran" style programs for data analysis,
> write basic MD or MC simulations, and be fairly fluent in Mathematica.

Who are your students?  In particular, how many total semesters worth
of programming classes will most of them be taking?  Just one, or two
or three or more?  And where does your class fall in that progression?

If you have a bunch of engineering-type students, most of whom will
only get ONE semester of computer programming in college, and your
class is IT, then I've got a screed about that all written up and
ready to go.  But from the the rest of your email, it sounds like that
might not be the case.  So, what's the full situation?

-- 
Andrew Piskorski <atp at piskorski.com>
http://www.piskorski.com/