This is a 1st year undergraduate course for geoscientists taught by Gerard Gorman, Matthew Piggott and Nicolas Barral. It is designed to be a first introduction to numerical methods. The Introduction to Programming for Geoscientists course is a prerequisite to taking this course. You can always click on the lecture series to get a complete overview of the topics covered and lecture schedule.

You will learn numerical methods by doing. Each lecture will cover:

  • theory underlying the numerical methods,
  • implementation exercises to help understand the theory,
  • programming exercises where you will use Python libraries to apply the methods.

The lectures notes are written in IPython notebook. This is a web-based interactive computational environment where you can combine code execution, text, mathematics, plots and rich media into a single document. You can refer back to the previous lecture series for information on how to get started with IPython notebook.

Practicals and feedback

Practical exercises are a critical part of the lecture. In addition to the lecturer, a team of GTA’s will be available to support your progress through these exercises. When you complete an exercise you should also ask the lecturer or GTA for feedback on your solution. Because of the interactive nature of this lecture course it is therefore critically important to attend lectures.

Course material

All the course notes are online. Sample solutions to the exercises will be made available after each lecture. If you miss a lecture (due to illness or other good reason) then make an earnest attempt at the exercises before reading the solution or you will deprive yourself of the learning experience.

Supplementary material

This course loosely follows the text book “Numerical Methods in Engineering with Python 3” by Jaan Kiusalaas. There are many copies in the library so do not feel that you have to buy it. As explained above, you do not have to read this book to excel in this course as the online course material is self contained. However, it is a good resource if you want to broaden your understanding of the subject.