Programming Projects in C for Students of Engineering, Science, and Mathematics

Book excerpt: Like a pianist who practices from a book of Ÿtudes, readers of Programming Projects in C for Students of Engineering, Science, and Mathematics will learn by doing. Written as a tutorial on how to think about, organize, and implement programs in scientific computing, this book achieves its goal through an eclectic and wide-ranging collection of projects. Each project presents a problem and an algorithm for solving it. The reader is guided through implementing the algorithm in C and compiling and testing the results. It is not necessary to carry out the projects in sequential order. The projects?contain suggested algorithms and partially completed programs for implementing them to enable the reader to exercise and develop skills in scientific computing;?require only a working knowledge of undergraduate multivariable calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra; and?are written in platform-independent standard C, and the Unix command-line is used to illustrate compilation and execution. The primary audience of this book is graduate students in mathematics, engineering, and the sciences. The book will also be of interest to advanced undergraduates and working professionals who wish to exercise and hone their skills in programming mathematical algorithms in C. A working knowledge of the C programming language is assumed.