INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE

Catalog description

This course will provide an introduction to some of the skills used by computational scientists. In order to widen the appeal to a broad cross-section of students, the course will be based on the use of Microsoft Excel to create visually-appealing mathematical pictures under the control of simple, visual basic program macros. The only prerequisites are a general familiarity with desktop computers and a knowledge of how to open an Excel spreadsheet. Quantitative reasoning is required, however the level of mathematical competency does not extend beyond a High School Algebra II course. Students will learn how to write simple macros in visual basic, use them to fill a spreadsheet with numerical values, and then use the graphical capabilities within Excel to transform this spreadsheet into visually-appealing pictures.