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Living Links: Applications of Matrix Operations to Population Studies

By Angela B. Shiflet, George W. Shiflet and Jesse A. Hanley
Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina

This page provides download links for a set of curricular materials designed to teach parallel computational modeling to undergraduate or graduate students in science and other STEM disciplines. The module begins with an introduction to vector and matrix operations and demonstration of the use of these constructs in storing and manipulating population data. The module then takes students through the construction of a population model and serial implementation using Matlab and Mathematica. This model is then re-implemented with C and parallelized using MPI. The module consists of the documents described below. The documents can be downloaded individually, or as a zip archive containing all of the documents:

Resources:

Populations Matrices Module (.doc) : MS Word file describing:

  • Population dynamics
  • Matrix operations and their use in dynamic systems modeling
  • Project ideas
  • Examples & solutions
  • References

Populations and Matrix Operations Matlab Script : Matlab script demonstrating vector and matrix operations.

Populations and Matrix Operations Mathematica Notebook : Mathematica notebook file demonstrating vector and matrix operations

Populations and Matrix Operations C code : Zip archive containing C code, header file, input file and results file. The C code implements vector and matrix operations which can also be found in scientific libraries for linear algebra.

Populations and Matrix Operations Module Archive : Zip archive containing all of the materials for the Living Links module.

Populations Matrices Module (.pdf) : PDF describing:

  • Population dynamics
  • Matrix operations and their use in dynamic systems modeling
  • Project ideas
  • Examples & solutions
  • References