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Sunday, December 15, 2013

Scientific Computing: Computational Science

Computational science is where mathematics, computer science and science & engineering have a medium to meet at. For those who never heard of computational science before, it is also known scientific computing or scientific computation. Applications of computational science are numerical simulations, modeling fitting and data analysis, and computational optimization.

What is numerical simulation?

Numerical simulations have several different depending on the task being simulated. Common numerical simulations would be to reconstruct and understand events such as tsunamis, earthquake and other natural disasters. Another common numerical simulation would be trying to predict the future such as the weather.


What is model fitting and data analysis?

Model fitting and data analysis is a very common form of computational science for people. Programs such as Matlabs are used to analyze different types of data. The use of model fitting and data analysis is common used is classes such as statistics and physics.

What is computational optimization?

In a simple case, a problem of optimization consists of maximizing or minimizing a real function. It chooses input values within an allowed set and computes the value of the function. Major sub-fields of computational optimization would be convex programming, integer programming, quadratic programming, fractional programming, nonlinear programming, stochastic programming, robust programming, combinatorial optimization, infinite-dimensional optimization, heuristics, and constraint satisfaction.

References:
http://www.nccs.gov/about/
http://www.scientific-computing.com/products/review_details.php?review_id=17
http://www.rrplanet.com/reproducible-research-librum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=372
http://sciencecodemanifesto.org/

1 comment:

  1. Hello Justin,
    I liked all of the images you used in your post. They need captions though, because sometimes it was hard to understand what they were supposed to be. For example, the weather image was tough for me to figure out until I looked at it for a while. Good use of numerous sources though, and your post was well-written and organized. It was very informative, but sometimes you go on tangents and explain something different than what you were talking about. When you said "what is numerical simulation," you went to talk about what it is used for.I hope to see improvement next time!

    ReplyDelete