C&EE 103
Applied Numerical Computing and Modeling in Civil and Environmental Engineering
Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, two hours; outside study, six hours. Requisites: course M20 (or Computer Science 31), Mathematics 33B or Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering 82 (either may be taken concurrently). Introduction to numerical computing with specific applications in civil and environmental engineering. Topics include error and computer arithmetic, root finding, curve fitting, numerical integration and differentiation, solution of systems of linear and nonlinear equations, numerical solution of ordinary and partial differential equations. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2023 - Margulis is a pretty nice guy. His lectures are organized and the slides are well-put-together, but the content itself can be very dry as the class covers iterative/numerical methods of mathematical processes. Overall, the class is very manageable and pretty easy as long as you don't procrastinate on PSETs, collaborate with peers, and do well on the midterm. Even though MATLAB is used a lot, there isn't any actual coding; it's mostly setting up parameters and calling pre-written functions and plotting. The final project is longer and more confusing (so pay attention to the wk 8, 9, 10 topics) but as long as you work on it steadily and meet with the professor/TAs, you should be good.
Spring 2023 - Margulis is a pretty nice guy. His lectures are organized and the slides are well-put-together, but the content itself can be very dry as the class covers iterative/numerical methods of mathematical processes. Overall, the class is very manageable and pretty easy as long as you don't procrastinate on PSETs, collaborate with peers, and do well on the midterm. Even though MATLAB is used a lot, there isn't any actual coding; it's mostly setting up parameters and calling pre-written functions and plotting. The final project is longer and more confusing (so pay attention to the wk 8, 9, 10 topics) but as long as you work on it steadily and meet with the professor/TAs, you should be good.
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Most Helpful Review
Summer 2023 - There are two parts in this class. The theoretical math part and the practical coding part. The total grade is calculated on 7 HWs (10% each) and 1 Final Project (30%). And for homework, half of it is math problems and it includes a lot of manual calculations and few elementary math proofs; the other half is MATLAB coding. The Final Project grade is based on MATLAB coding (70%) and a report (30%). Then, for the theoretical part, the professor gave all resources you can expect as a student, pre-recorded lectures/notes (First half by professor Ertugrul Taciroglu; second half by professor Steve Margulis), recorded live-stream lectures/notes(by professor himself), practice problems with solutions, homework solutions, lot of Office Hours, a very good textbook (most of the time you don't have to read because of other resources); basically, you just learn the theoretical part as much as you want, and a good grade is guaranteed (because the professor does not have a TA and he graded extremely lenient himself, and the theoretical part looks like practice problems). The hard part is the MATLAB coding part. It depends, if you know how to code and use the internet wisely, it should not be a big deal since the professor would provide a template to you. The Final Project is all about coding (70% of Final Project Grade), try to understand "Least-square approximation, all methods of interpolation, all methods for Initial Value Problems (ODE only), the only introduced method of solving nonlinear system, i.e., Newton Iteration very well for Final Project. It's obvious, the person who grades your homework matters, and usually it's not your professor himself, be aware of that. There exist 2% extra credits and 97.5% is A+, 90% is A, 85% is A-; if you really want to explore the world of numerical analysis, I recommend taking it with Professor Rüter.
Summer 2023 - There are two parts in this class. The theoretical math part and the practical coding part. The total grade is calculated on 7 HWs (10% each) and 1 Final Project (30%). And for homework, half of it is math problems and it includes a lot of manual calculations and few elementary math proofs; the other half is MATLAB coding. The Final Project grade is based on MATLAB coding (70%) and a report (30%). Then, for the theoretical part, the professor gave all resources you can expect as a student, pre-recorded lectures/notes (First half by professor Ertugrul Taciroglu; second half by professor Steve Margulis), recorded live-stream lectures/notes(by professor himself), practice problems with solutions, homework solutions, lot of Office Hours, a very good textbook (most of the time you don't have to read because of other resources); basically, you just learn the theoretical part as much as you want, and a good grade is guaranteed (because the professor does not have a TA and he graded extremely lenient himself, and the theoretical part looks like practice problems). The hard part is the MATLAB coding part. It depends, if you know how to code and use the internet wisely, it should not be a big deal since the professor would provide a template to you. The Final Project is all about coding (70% of Final Project Grade), try to understand "Least-square approximation, all methods of interpolation, all methods for Initial Value Problems (ODE only), the only introduced method of solving nonlinear system, i.e., Newton Iteration very well for Final Project. It's obvious, the person who grades your homework matters, and usually it's not your professor himself, be aware of that. There exist 2% extra credits and 97.5% is A+, 90% is A, 85% is A-; if you really want to explore the world of numerical analysis, I recommend taking it with Professor Rüter.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2025 - Don't get it wrong, et is a great guy. But he absolutely sucks butt as a professor. I went into this class thinking that it was going to be not easy but not super duper hard. Tldr: it was super duper hard. This guy just reads off the slides that he made back 10 years ago and doesn't really add much to what's already on the slides. Lectures were sooooo boring. I stopped going around 3rd week, and sometimes I would come back but he would be even worse at presenting the material. Discussion was even worse holyyy. I got the worse of the TAs which was Devasmitt. Bro did NOT know what was going on and I remember in week 3 I asked the same question 5 different times cuz his explanations did not make sense. I remember one day he sent out a bruinlearn notification that said that no one showed up to discussion. Hmmm I wonder why. Bro also wrote on the WALL thinking it was the whiteboard when there was a clear border between the wall and whiteboard. All he said was "oh oops! It's okay though because someone also wrote on it before" pointing to the wall with a marker line on it. Bro forgot that that was him 30 minutes ago writing on the wall to test the marker. That's when I knew this class was officially cooked. Not the other TA though. My goat Haorui would never. The grading material consisted of 1 midterm 35%, 1 final 40%, 8 homeworks for a total of 25% of your grade. You'd think that the homeworks would be the easiest part. You would be wrong. Homework was insanely work heavy and required you to know MATLAB with your whole heart and being. Combined with the poor presentation of difficult material by the professor and the insane homeworks, these things took so long to do. Even A.I. couldn't help very well. The midterm was by far the easiest thing ever. It was basically a word-for-word copy of the practice midterm that the professor gave you. The average on the test was a 90%. So that leads me to the final. Ohhhhh that final still gives me nightmares. Everyone thought the final was going to be just as easy as the midterm and so most people just reviewed the practice final exam and maybe went over the homeworks and all that. There were 5 questions on that final. Tell me why I could only answer 1 out of the 5 questions fully and even that was with uncertainty. There was material on there that we had never had a chance to practice or even cover during the school year. Normally when people are taking the 3 hour final, there are the geniuses that finish an hour early, or the people that give up and want to go home an hour early. No one left their seats for 2 hours and 45 minutes. The only people that did was because they had another final in 15 minutes. I'm being so serious when I say that 95% of the students could not answer every single question. So we begged the TA for more time because at 2 hours and 50 minutes, I was still on question 4. We ended up getting 30 more minutes extra, but I don't know how much that helped. Professor comes in when the exam was supposed to end and was surprised that everyone was still taking the test. He says "Oh you're still taking the test?" We say "yes." He says "it's hard right?" We laugh and say "yes it's pretty hard." And then he says the kicker, "That's what you get for the midterm being too easy." MF YOUUUU MADE THAT TEST!! WHY WOULD YOU MAKE THE MIDTERM EXTREMELY EASY, SEE THAT THE GRADING DISTRIBUTION WAS INSANELY HIGH AND THEN TORTURE US FOR THE DECISION YOUUUUU MADEEEE???? Anyways, the reason I ended up getting an A- is because he did feel bad for making the test too hard so he offered extra credit that added 4% extra to your total grade, which is very generous. The caveat is that it was during the start of summer break, so I had to do a little more work even after finals. In conclusion, take it with Margulis the goat. If you have no other choice, just go to Haorui's office hours. Thank you coming to my TedTalk.
Spring 2025 - Don't get it wrong, et is a great guy. But he absolutely sucks butt as a professor. I went into this class thinking that it was going to be not easy but not super duper hard. Tldr: it was super duper hard. This guy just reads off the slides that he made back 10 years ago and doesn't really add much to what's already on the slides. Lectures were sooooo boring. I stopped going around 3rd week, and sometimes I would come back but he would be even worse at presenting the material. Discussion was even worse holyyy. I got the worse of the TAs which was Devasmitt. Bro did NOT know what was going on and I remember in week 3 I asked the same question 5 different times cuz his explanations did not make sense. I remember one day he sent out a bruinlearn notification that said that no one showed up to discussion. Hmmm I wonder why. Bro also wrote on the WALL thinking it was the whiteboard when there was a clear border between the wall and whiteboard. All he said was "oh oops! It's okay though because someone also wrote on it before" pointing to the wall with a marker line on it. Bro forgot that that was him 30 minutes ago writing on the wall to test the marker. That's when I knew this class was officially cooked. Not the other TA though. My goat Haorui would never. The grading material consisted of 1 midterm 35%, 1 final 40%, 8 homeworks for a total of 25% of your grade. You'd think that the homeworks would be the easiest part. You would be wrong. Homework was insanely work heavy and required you to know MATLAB with your whole heart and being. Combined with the poor presentation of difficult material by the professor and the insane homeworks, these things took so long to do. Even A.I. couldn't help very well. The midterm was by far the easiest thing ever. It was basically a word-for-word copy of the practice midterm that the professor gave you. The average on the test was a 90%. So that leads me to the final. Ohhhhh that final still gives me nightmares. Everyone thought the final was going to be just as easy as the midterm and so most people just reviewed the practice final exam and maybe went over the homeworks and all that. There were 5 questions on that final. Tell me why I could only answer 1 out of the 5 questions fully and even that was with uncertainty. There was material on there that we had never had a chance to practice or even cover during the school year. Normally when people are taking the 3 hour final, there are the geniuses that finish an hour early, or the people that give up and want to go home an hour early. No one left their seats for 2 hours and 45 minutes. The only people that did was because they had another final in 15 minutes. I'm being so serious when I say that 95% of the students could not answer every single question. So we begged the TA for more time because at 2 hours and 50 minutes, I was still on question 4. We ended up getting 30 more minutes extra, but I don't know how much that helped. Professor comes in when the exam was supposed to end and was surprised that everyone was still taking the test. He says "Oh you're still taking the test?" We say "yes." He says "it's hard right?" We laugh and say "yes it's pretty hard." And then he says the kicker, "That's what you get for the midterm being too easy." MF YOUUUU MADE THAT TEST!! WHY WOULD YOU MAKE THE MIDTERM EXTREMELY EASY, SEE THAT THE GRADING DISTRIBUTION WAS INSANELY HIGH AND THEN TORTURE US FOR THE DECISION YOUUUUU MADEEEE???? Anyways, the reason I ended up getting an A- is because he did feel bad for making the test too hard so he offered extra credit that added 4% extra to your total grade, which is very generous. The caveat is that it was during the start of summer break, so I had to do a little more work even after finals. In conclusion, take it with Margulis the goat. If you have no other choice, just go to Haorui's office hours. Thank you coming to my TedTalk.
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