<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hello gang,<br><br>I forgot to put the URL up on the board until some of you asked me about it after class, but the home page for the course this term is:<br><br><a href="http://www-math.mit.edu/~stevenj/18.335/">http://www-math.mit.edu/~stevenj/18.335/</a><br><br>The handout today was just a printout of this web page, which lists the basic information about the syllabus, grading, textbook, etcetera.<br><br>On the web site, after each lecture I will add a brief summary of what was covered, along with pointers to relevant readings in the text or elsewhere and links to any handouts. (Today's lecture summary will be up shortly.)<br><br>As I mentioned in the beginning of today's class, as far as the numerical-linear-algebra content of the course we will be closely following the textbook in most cases (with a few exceptions, e.g. the text does not discuss memory efficiency). However, we will not be covering the material in the same order. Today's material on Gaussian elimination starts in chapter 20 of the book, and from there we will work backwards to build up the tools that we need to analyze error characteristics and to branch out to other algorithms.<br><br>I will not review basic linear algebra except in the most cursor way; if you feel you need a refresher, I strongly recommend reading the first three chapters of the text (about 20 pages) by Friday. The first five chapters of the book are available for free online if you have not purchased the text yet;<br><br><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span><a href="http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/people/Nick.Trefethen/text.html">http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/people/Nick.Trefethen/text.html</a><br><br>I highly recommend purchasing the text, which has become a classic in the field.<br><br>--SGJ</body></html>