Today Dr. Panoff came in and gave an introduction to the scientific computing class, by showing the various problems that occur when using numerals to represent numbers in computing, and philosophies that should be implemented for good scientific computing. We saw some of the rounding errors that can occur in ExcelTM and some of the general calcuation errors that can occur when working with very small decimal numbers.
Some simple simulations were then run to give a basic introduciton to StellaTM and solving complex problems on the computer, such as balancing a dinosaur ecosystem. Different factors such as birth rate, and food needs had to be taken into account before an accuarate model could be made. This gave students insight on how to think scientifically so that they could then transfer these thoughts to computer usage.
After lunch, Ronnie and Conrad gave a short intorduction to Perl. Basic, input, output, and looping were discussed, along with simple programming concepts. The class then went about trying to write programs in Perl to calculate the digits of pi, and then to model a bouncing object.