Beskjeder

Hi all,

There are no in-person lectures on September 19 and 20. Instead, I have provided some lecture recordings for you to watch. See the message on Canvas for links and further details.

Best,
Anders

Hi all,

Towards the end of today's lecture we discussed counting FLOPs and I said that matrix multiplication requires O(n^2) FLOPs. That's of course wrong -- apologies for the confusion! What I had in mind was matrix-vector multiplication, because we had previously talked about solving matrix equations by doing matrix-vector multiplication with an inverse matrix. But if we are talking about matrix-matrix multiplication, that requires O(n^3) FLOPs, when using the naive method.

I have extended the chapter on counting FLOPs in the lecture notes with examples that explain matrix-vector and matrix-matrix multiplication, so have a look there if you want to see the details.

But, there exists faster algorithms for matrix multiplication, and this is a live field of research -- see e.g. these news stories:

• ...

Hi all,

In our first lecture we talked a bit about the possibilities and the potential pitfalls of using AI tools when learning a new subject or programming language. And just last week our colleague Anders Malthe-S?renssen wrote an interesting opinion piece in Dagens N?ringsliv about this, which you can read here.

The introduction might be of special interest to you. It describes a recent study from MIT which investigated how the use of AI tools (as opposed to more old-fashioned web search) impacted the learning outcomes for students who were tasked with solving a problem using a programming language they did not know from before.

Best,
Anders

Hi all,

To help those who cannot attend all lectures and want to catch up by just reading the lecture notes, I have created a page here where I will list which topics were covered in each lecture.

Best,
Anders

Hi all,

At the end of today's lecture (Aug. 23) we discussed variable scopes and we did some improvised experiments on what can go wrong if you use the same name for two variables of different type. This is not a very common issue, but in case you have been wondering why we got the results we did in those tests, I have now added a new code example with comments that explain the results we got. You can find the example here.

Best,
Anders
 

Hi all,

Edit: Mia Merlid also volunteered after I first posted this message, so I've updated the original message below.

We now have three student representatives for this course:

• Synne Mo Sandnes
• Kristian Liodden
• Mia Merlid

Thanks a lot to Synne, Kristian and Mia for volunteering! There will be a course evaluation meeting at the end of the semester where Synne, Kristian and Mia will meet with us in the teaching team. So if you have any feedback about the course that you want the representatives to bring up in that meeting, please do get in touch with them before then.

Best,
Anders
 

Dear all,

Welcome to this course on computational physics. We look forward to meeting you all!

Here's some practical info, in preparation for the start of teaching in week 34:

• Our first lecture will be on Thursday 22 August, at 10:15 in Store fysiske auditorium.
• We have a dedicated course web page for all the fun, technical stuff in the course. This is were you will find things like tutorials, code snippets, project descriptions, etc. (Note that these pages are in active development.)
• Important note for Windows users: This course is based on everyone having access to a Unix terminal, i.e. the basic command-line system used on Linux and Mac. For Windows users this means that you must install Windows Subsystem for Linux...