New tri-language version of "Fundamentals of Numerical Computation"

Community Teaching & Outreach
1

I have updated the textbook Fundamentals of Numerical Computation, coauthored with Rich Braun, to be an online-first resource at fncbook.com.

The book is intended for a standalone course or two-semester sequence in numerical computation for undergraduates. It assumes prior experience with calculus, (basic) differential equations, and computing.

Each of the 169 code-based examples is presented for Julia, MATLAB, and numpy/scipy. (I have never taught using the Python versions, but the others are time-tested.) Each section has multiple written and coding exercises.

Print versions for MATLAB (2017) and Julia (2022) are still available at the SIAM bookstore. Changes from the Julia print edition are mostly typo fixes and formatting, except that I split the book’s pedagogical collection of functions into a package separate from all the more familiar packages that are used throughout the book.

2

This is really timely, since I’m co-teaching a numerics class this spring at MIT and we wanted to show both Python and Julia examples. Thanks for sharing!

3

Great books!

This is a really minor thing, but I noted this quote on https://fncbook.com/overview-2:

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The “hit her” kind of seems to imply Han hit a woman (Leia), which I found really strange, especially to use as a quote. Turns out the actual quote is “must have hit pretty close to the mark…” (i.e. without the first “her”), https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/65d084df-4427-4b2c-97d5-49be36177873 :man_shrugging:

4

Huh. I thought I vetted all of those against the scripts a long time ago, but you’re right. Thanks.

I still say Han shot first, though.

5

Update for Spring 2026

I know the online book has now been used by instructors at U of Delaware (my home institution), MIT, the U of Virginia, and U of Florida. I also see (non-personally-identifiable) significant visits from Baltimore, Provo and Kansas City, plus the Netherlands, Vietnam, China, Turkey, South Africa, and more.

  • In addition to the trilingual version at fncbook.com, there are also single-language versions for Julia, Matlab, and Python. Same content, less clutter. These are derived from the root version on each build, so they should stay in sync.
  • New animation outputs in Chapter 6 on initial-value problems.
  • Video walkthroughs for all the Julia demo examples, through Chapter 6. Currently, the first two chapters are posted, but I plan to have them all up before the fall semester starts.
  • Streamlined description of how to set up Julia for the book. (The book is agnostic regarding the use of environments such as Jupyter, Pluto, BonitoBook, etc.)
  • Updated for the latest versions of DifferentialEquations dependencies.
  • Claude was used to help locate and fix typos and a few unclear proof steps.