The Nature of Mathematical Modeling

If I was French, I would say "je suis desole." In the introduction to The Nature of Mathematical Modeling I announce a Web site for sharing NMM files and projects. My interest in including this grew out of my experience teaching the course at MIT that led to the book; each semester the highlight was presentations of student modeling projects, and from the outset we used the then-new Web to share these so that the pleasure of seeing each other's activities could extend before and after the final class. I casually thought that it would be a nice idea to do something comparable for the much larger readership of the book.

The operative words there being "much larger." As I embarked on an experiment with Cambridge University Press to scale up the MIT site to create an online community around the book, like many early Web sites we found that we had seriously underestimated the demands on both software tools and people to handle the scaling. As a consequence, the NMM site languished as those capabilities were developed, and as other projects become higher priorities.

I'm currently working on a second edition of NMM that will, beyond fixing too many typos that snuck past me, students, and copy editors, include new material that really belongs in the book (such as symmetry and control) but that goes beyond what I could fit into the first edition. When that comes out we'll revisit the feasibility of a collaborative Web site for NMM readers. In advance, I've linked in below all of the computer files that are mentioned in the book.

I continue to be delighted by the enthusiastic response from readers who share my love of this material, and share my frustration with the fragmentation and relative inacessability of so much of the literature. Noting my obvious bias, I nevertheless think that as a modest pedagogical experiment NMM works as a book, and in the future hope to be able to offer an online component that can keep up with your interest, and mine.

Neil Gershenfeld

Chapter Reference	File	Sample Output/Notes
5.3.9	stochwalk.m	1D random walker
6.2	euler.c	Euler integration
6.2	rk.c	Runge-Kutta integration
6.2	rkstep.c	Runge-Kutta integration with step size adjustment
A1.2.1 Postrscipt	psline.c	psline.eps
A1.2.1 Postrscipt	psimage.c	psimage.eps
A1.2.2 X Windows	xline.c	xline
A1.2.2 X Windows	ximage.c	ximage
A1.2.3 OpenGL	glexample.c	cube and shere
A1.2.3 OpenGL	glsurf.c	wiggling surface
	rendered sphere
	surface made from spheres
A1.2.4 Java	JavaLine.java	Display as applet
A1.2.4 Java	JavaImage.java	Display as applet
gl4Java	glexample.c done in gl4java	glexample.c done in gl4java
gl4Java	glsurf.c done in gl4java	glsurf.c done in gl4java
Sound	play sounds in matlab
A2.2 Socket I/O	sendupd.c	Termial Output Sending a Packet
A2.2 Socket I/O	recvudp.c	Termial Output Receiving a Packet
A2.3 Parallel Programming	mpipi.c	Notes on MPI

Other files
afsr.m
cwm.m
cwmf.m
densefig.m
densek.m
denses.m
diffadi.c
diffexp.c
diffimp.c
ent.c
entest.c
euler.c
femat.m
fit.m
graphlap.m
henon.m
hmm.m
index.html
invwave.m
kalman.m
kernel.m
lgshex.c
lgshex_n.c
lgshex_nox.c
lgssq.c
linemin.m
maps.m
markov.m
nm.m
nurb.m
odenumeu.c
odenumeuler.c
odenumrk.c
odenumrkqc.c
opt.m
pade.m
pca.m
pdedrum.m
pdenumdi.c
pdenumdiffadi.c
pdenumdiffexp.c
pdenumdiffimp.c
pdenumgs.c
pdenumso.c
pdenumsor.c
sor.c
stochbrn.m
stochmod.m
stochwlk.m
str.c
xng.c
xng.h