Joseph Traub

Traub founded the CS department at Columbia and has contributed quite a bit to the field of numerical algorithms. However, he's a bit senile these days. This course was pretty light for a 4000 level CS class. We literally did nothing the first third of the semester. Traub just rambled on about super computers and Moore's Law for 2 weeks. The rest of the semester was ok, covering complexity theory for numerical algorithms, multi-dimensional integration, solving PDEs and solving arbitrary systems of non-linear equations. I learned a bit, but could definitely have learned way more if Traub made the class harder. He assigns 12 HWs - each is either one programming assignment (definitely under 200 lines in any language) or a single problem/proof. He often makes multiple HWs due at the same time which is annoying. Most of the assignments were towards the end of the semester. Some of the Extra Credits involved reading papers and articles and writing short essays on Discrete Fourier Transform or Moore's Law which is really stupid for a CS class. The midterm and final were pretty easy. If you pay attention in class and read your notes, it shouldn't be too hard to get close to a 100. Traub doesn't use a text book or post notes online, so make sure you take diligent notes - it's the only thing you can study from for the tests! Pay close attention to pros/cons of algorithms and definitions…

The very hilarious review below says it all. I'd bet money that it was written by a TA. Who btw were super helpful with everything the course threw at us, as they knew the real challenge was understanding what Prof. Traub wanted. While Traub is a great man in his field (don't talk to him about it though), and is hilarious and cute, he is not a great lecturer as it is impossible to follow him. And it's not because the material is too hard. Nor because we cover too much.

12 HWs 30% 6 Extra Credit Assignments 6% Midterm 30% Final 40%

Scientific Computation I is an elaborate practical joke. You will walk into this class the first day with a healthy respect for Joseph Traub and his towering reputation in the community. After all, you're taking Scientific Computation from the man who invented scientific computation as a serious topic of study. Then you will receive the first homework assignment. You will look at it. You will wonder if there's been some mistake. You will wonder if Prof. Traub accidentally sent his 12-year-old great-great-grandchild's homework to the TAs to copy instead of the real assignment. Why? Because the assignment instructs you to "choose five different scientific problems and their continuous mathematical models." Not understand, not describe, not explain, just "choose". It's not a mistake, the TAs will assure you, and they will remind you not to waste your time looking for the actual equations on which these models are based. Remember that time freshman year when your Calc II class talked about Taylor series? That seventy-five minute lecture was all of SciComp. You'll talk about Taylor series the very first day, but as the days turn into weeks and the weeks into months, you'll wonder when you get to move onto something else. You don't. At last, the final exam will be offered. The TAs will admonish you, as they did before the midterm, that decorating your blue books with animal pictures…

Try to stay away from this professor. He is really old and doesn't know how to teach. You won't be able to hear his voice and anything you do hear won't be comprehensible. Basically, you don't need the lecture for this class. The subject material is sooo easy. Taylor, Newton, Taylor, Taylor, etc. "Everything derives from Taylor." Really, the material is a joke but he doesn't know how to teach and will confuse the f out of you. I taught myself the whole course. The double extra credit is the stupidest thing I've heard of. (Find errors in newspapers) What does this have to do with anything?? I cannot overstate what a horrible experience this has been with Traub teaching, because I love the material. Its all about approximating functions that can't be fully solved. Its really all very interesting, but Traub's class is a complete waste of time. There are people always sleeping in class, its ridiculous. Most people try to sit in the back so they don't have to look at this guy and be trying to figure out what he's trying to say. His explanations are sooo unclear, the TA was a big help - the TA was even confused about Traub's explanations. There were apparently 3 TAs for this class although only 1 was actually of help. 1 was a complete nuisance and the other was okay but arrogant. All in all, the will probably have to take this class and with Traub so go find somebody's midterms. Oh,…

I can understand what the course is supposed to be and why it could be a required and important course for CS students (particularly, the part in the course description about an "Introduction to computation on digital computers" and the discussion of chaos), but the course as it is now has little to offer: First off, Traub himself is incomprehensible. However, is absolutely necessary to go to class, otherwise you will have no idea what is going on since he quite often teaches random topics of interest to him that are nowhere to be found in the book (though I cannot guarantee that going will actually solve this problem since many a time I have looked back at my notes for reference only to find that the three or four lines he scribbled on the board lacked context and explanation -- I learned this on the first day and therefore started writing down everything he said as well, but this still did not help). At least twice a day he will ask the class a question only to be faced with a sea of blank stares (and the course was in the middle of the day!) because nobody has a clue what he's talking about. He usually waits for a full minute or two of awkward silence before moving on. One day, we spent the whole hour and fifteen minutes discussing climate change (he honestly covered the entire board with evidence that its happening/evidence that its not happening/evidence it is caused by m…

We're now 3 weeks away from the final exam and I still don't really know what the point of this class is. The first day of class we spent half the time discussing how Moore's law is the most important law in computer science. First of all... that's BS. Moore's law is an observation of fact, not a force that drives (though, granted, it did have some effect... but to call it more important than anything Turing did?). Moving on... The man is somewhat insane. It isn't hard to do well, but he is cutting back on the extra credit. From what I hear, there used to be possible to get more than 20% of your grade be extra credit, and anyone who gets over a 100% gets an A+. Now he "only" gives out 16% possible extra credit. 10% of that extra credit is in the form of problems (not hard). 6% is in giving him articles from newspapers that have errors in them. The thing is, he decides how "worthy" the error is. I've sent him plenty of articles this semester, and only one of which was "worthy" of the extra credit. All of them had numerical or factual errors... it's just somewhat ridiculous. The class really is pretty darned easy. The thing is, though, you NEED to go to class and pay attention (even though it is very difficult to do so...), as his exams are based largely off lecture (e.g. what are the benefits to using the Newton method... some of the reasons are very subjective). He also gets a…

OMG WTF. It doesn't matter, as you have to take this class to graduate with a CS major. Traub is crazy! He was probably pretty good in his time, but the lectures were incoherent. I hope you like getting your homework emailed to you in all caps in something like (but not!) LaTeX formatting. What? On the other hand, it's not very hard to do well, and the exams generally recap the homework. Generally.

Enjoyed the class and Traub is pretty good, but 2 thoughts: 1. Class needs to have more programming assignments, that are more challenging. Rather than tell us to use the Newton method to find the root of a particular equation, we should be given a general, possibly multipart problem that we are allowed to solve using all the tools at our disposal at the time. 2. We probably could have moved quite a bit faster in the material covered. Topics such as numerical differentiation and linear algebra were not touched upon. So while Traub himself does a decent job, the class needs to be harder.

Completely miserable teacher, you will learn absolutely nothing in the class. He's not even coherent during lecture (which really doesn't matter, considering the few people who actually show up to lecture aren't even conscious).