Final
Exam Information
The
final exam will be held sometime near the beginning of May.
We can make special arrangements similar to the ones we
used for the mid-semester tests.
THE
TOPICS COVERED BY UNITS 0 to 9
WEB
BASED ENGINEERING 1: Course Content
Unit
0 deals with the preliminary issues of the course. These
are: the rules and regulations we have to follow, the software
we are going to use, the directions for the proper installation
and/or use of the various software, the text books we will
need, our methods of communication and assignment delivery
systems, the Lehigh computing environment, and an optional
introduction to UNIX .
Unit
1 deals with the basic elements of a C++ program. The notion
of constants and variables, the idea of assignment operators
and arithmetic operations, and simple input output streams
are discussed here. Some simple example programs are illustrated
and discussed. By the end of this unit we should all know
how to use our software to write, compile, and execute a
simple program. Such a program should do the following:
prompt the user for some data, do some arithmetic calculations
using the data provided and some other constants, and output
to the screen some numbers together with some strings of
letters that clarify the outputted results.
Unit
2 deals with branching in procedures. Depending on the outcome
of a logical condition we may want our program to follow
one of two paths and in some cases one of several paths.
This is accomplished by the use if statements and switch
statements. In addition to this control structures we will
learn how to read from user supplied data files and how
to create such files, and we will discuss the mathematical
library functions available in C++ and the methods of their
usage.
Unit
3 deals with the control structures that allow us to program
repetition of several statements in a way controllable by
the inputs to the program. These structures are also called
loops ( while loops, do while loops, for loops etc. ). As
we move through the programming challenges of the course
and specially with units 2 and 3 and beyond we can start
looking at some problems which have their origin in some
important engineering application. All our assignments and
most of our examples are such problems. An attempt will
be made to introduce you to questions related to some engineering
systems.
Unit
4 deals with two very important practices of engineering.
Engineers prefer to communicate their numerical results
and summaries in form of tables. You have heard the saying
" a picture is worth a thousand words". Tables
are almost as valuable as pictures ( graphs ) in presenting
numerical data, but in addition they can be very precise.
We all know the fixation of engineers with precision ( a
bridge cannot afford to nearly stand) . In this unit we
learn how to output our data so that it looks clear and
orderly and of controlled precision. In addition we will
learn another important engineering tool: the great analytical
simplifier, linear interpolation. Almost all laws of nature
relate two or more quantities in complex and very curvy
styles. Engineers, since the very early years, have found
out that simple straight lines can represent these relations
as long as certain conditions are met. We will study the
idea of linear interpolation.
Unit
5 deals with user defined functions in C++. Functions are
procedures which augment the main function of our program
and can accomplish certain tasks on their own and then transfer
their results to the main ( or to other functions) and/or
output their results to files or to the screen. They are
in many ways similar to the functions of the mathematical
library, but there is more to them. Functions with a single
return, multiple returns and no return will be discussed.
In addition, we will start our study of numerical methods
in solving problems. In this unit we will learn how to approximate
roots of nonlinear and transcendental equations. The bisection
method, Newton's method and Secant method will be discussed.
Unit
6 deals with arrays. When you deal with large number of
data entries and you need to keep them in order and easily
referable ( are we talking again about engineers' habits
or what? ) you prefer to use arrays. Some times one dimensional
( list of test scores), many times two dimensional ( spreadsheets
of various scores for various students), and some times
multi dimensional ( the data needed to predict the weather
over a region over a few days) . In this unit we will also
learn some elementary statistics, such as: how to calculate
the mean, max, min, standard deviation of a set of data
and how to find a straight line curve fit of some given
relational data.
Unit
7 deals with three important issues: first, we learn how
to use spreadsheets ( Excel ) to do mathematical calculations,
tables, graphs etc.; then we will continue our numerical
methods discussion so that we can talk about numerical derivatives
and integrals ( don’t let the big words scare you,
we will keep everything much simpler than you think);...
finaly we will study the operating system UNIX in some detail
.
Unit
8 is used to introduce the powerful and popular software
MATLAB . We will learn how to declare, define, and operate
on arrays of numbers interactively. We will discuss the
mathematical functions available, and the plotting of data
facility of MATLAB. We will also write short programs in
MATLAB. In parallel we will discuss some engineering applications
relating to exponential growth - decay.
Unit
9 will allow us to continue using MATLAB and applying it
to solve systems of linear algebraic equations. A short
introduction to the theory of such systems will also be
attempted.
