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

[Nathan Moore]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nathan Moore <ntmoore at gmail.com>
Date: Nov 20, 2007 2:22 PM
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Teaching Scientific Computation (looking for the
perfect text)
To: Michael Jinks <mjinks at uchicago.edu>


Hi Michael,

I encourage you to find a copy of "Classical Fortran" (M. Kupferschmid, ISBN
0-8247-0802-4) and read the first chapter.  The clarity of purpose in this
book,  "simply using computers to do scientific work", is actually what
convince me to initially adopt F77 as a teaching language.

Nathan


On Nov 20, 2007 1:24 PM, Michael Jinks <mjinks at uchicago.edu> wrote:

> 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.
> <snip>
>
> I have a related (I hope) question.
>
> I don't teach a course, but some colleagues and I are in the position
> of "computation ambassador" to a range of researchers (faculty, grad,
> and undergrad).  Our semi-imaginary "classic case" is a professor in the
> humanities who might have an abstract sense that large-scale computation
> could aid their research, but no idea how to actually apply the
> available technology.  In the worst case, this person regards anything
> with a command line as terra incognita, and will require some serious
> hand holding early on.
>
> We can provide the hand holding, and we know a fair amount about
> computers, clusters, what's (im)possible, but none of us have a deep
> technical background in the "research" part of research computing, so
> we've spent a lot of time lately asking ourselves how to bridge the gap.
>
> So I hope I'm not hijacking the thread, but beyond issuing a "me too" to
> Nathan's textbook question I'd also like to know if anybody has some
> general tips on how to get started, a sort of "adult primer" on research
> computing which we could benefit from ourselves as well as passing along
> to the curious.
>
> Thanks,
> -j
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-- 
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Nathan Moore
Assistant Professor, Physics
Winona State University
AIM: nmoorewsu
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-- 
- - - - - - -   - - - - - - -   - - - - - - -
Nathan Moore
Assistant Professor, Physics
Winona State University
AIM: nmoorewsu
- - - - - - -   - - - - - - -   - - - - - - -
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