This is an online course designed for students in the Doctoral Program in Biomedical Engineering & Biotechnology. Students in other degree programs should not take this course without permission from their advisor and/or chairperson.
There is no textbook for this course, but you might find it useful to have a few books on topics such as precalculus, calculus, and discrete math as references. If you don't have some of these, you could borrow them either from friends or a library. No particular title or edition in these subjects is necessary - most are quite standard. I have plenty of calculus books and I'm willing to give some away, so let me know if you need one.
You may need Excel a few times in this course.
You will need to get Mathematica 7.0 for your own computer. I strongly suggest that you not try to get by with using a computer lab or someone elses computer. You need to be able to experiment with the software in order to learn how to use it. The easiest way to get Mathematica is directly from Wolfram Research. You can purchase "Mathematica for Students" for around $140 or you can buy a one semester license for around $50. For more information on these options (and more), go to the Wolfram Site.
MATLAB and Maple are not suitable substitutions for Mathematica.
Some notes about the new version of Mathematica.
Work for this course will consist of problem sets to be turned in mostly as Mathematica Notebooks. Grades will be based on your work on these problems sets together with a small participation component. Depending on whether the software can be set up, there may be a few online quizzes that would also count for a small part of the grade.
If you have any questions about this course, feel free to contact me by email: Kenneth_Levasseur@uml.edu