Projects

COMPUTATIONAL PROJECTS FOR CSEP

The teaching material produced by CSEP authors inlcudes a growing collection of Projectsand Case Studies from a variety of scientific and engineering applications in addition to aset of chapters of general interest.

CSEP will put this material in the public domain on the Internet in the interest of the wid-est possible dissemination of the product.

The target audience includes graduate students and advanced undergraduates with inter-est in high performance computing from any area of science, engineering, mathematics, orcomputer science.

The CSEP “electronic book” (or e-book) has three major sections. Part A contains generalbackground material on modern high performance computing, with chapters on com-puter architecture, networks, programming languages, and scientific visualization. Part Bhas chapters on methods widely used in the computational sciences, for example numericsolution of partial differential equations, mathematical optimization, random numbersand monte carlo techniques, and efficient methods in linear algebra. Part C is a set ofprojects that illustrate the methods described in the first two parts.

This document is a guideline for authors who wish to contribute material for Part C. Thee-book is a “living document” that we plan to be continually updating, adding more casestudies as they become available as well as keeping the all the parts up to date as comput-ing environments change and new computational methods evolve.

Projects

We expect to include two types of projects in the book: short computational projects thatstudents with little or no background in a discipline can expect to complete in a few weekstime, and longer projects that may require a graduate-level understanding of a field andmay take 10 weeks or longer to complete. We will refer to the shorter cases as “projects”and reserve the term “case study” for the longer projects.

Projects can either illustrate an algorithm or a high performance computing technique,and they do not have to be tied to an application in a particular discipline. If they arebased on research in one of the computational sciences, the basic concepts should beclearly explained in a fashion that is understandable for students outside the discipline.Case studies can be fairly advanced and be directed toward readers who are willing tocommit a substantial amount of time in learning the concepts and methods of the applica-tion area. These chapters could be a major part of a computational course in that field; forexample, two case studies from chemistry, combined with several chapters from Parts Aand B and one or two projects, might form a year-long course on computational chemistryfor first-year graduate students in chemistry.

Both projects and case studies should include fully debugged programs, problems (withseparately supplied solutions), examples, and references for further study. The materialshould be teachable, i.e. include material for lecturing and a generous collection of illus-trative exercises and examples interspersed throughout the chapter.

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Often it is tempting to let a case study turn into a journal-quality survey of the latestadvances in a computational field. However, to be useful for this project, the chapters can-not be research papers that require a deep understanding of the area. These chaptersshould be based on the latest techniques that are widely recognized, but should not neces-sarily describe cutting-edge research.

Submitting New Case Studies

Case studies and Projects should be of interdisciplinary interest and illustrate new andimportant computational techniques. Since they are intended for interdisciplinary instruc-tion within the scientific, engineering, mathematics, and computer science communitiesthey should present the material discussed in a way that can be understood without toomuch effort by an advanced senior or first-year graduate student unfamiliar with the areaof application.

The following basic structure is recommended:0.Notation Key

Authors are encouraged to provide a notation key and an optional list of programs atthe beginning of the case studies.I.Introduction

The introduction should describe the application area and emphasize the importanceof computational approaches in the solution of open research problems.II.Theory and Formalism

The problems addressed are to be explained in such a way that they are transparent toan audience with diverse backgrounds. Equations should be discussed. This partshould be self-contained. Chapters are expected to refer to computational methods,architecture and algorithm points discussed in the general and introductory chaptersto avoid duplication of material. Graphics and Tables should come with captions.III.Working Codes and Examples (with illustrations).

Examples may be the most important parts of the chapters and as such should be con-structed with much care and attention. Programs should be well structured and shouldmeet accepted scientific programming standards. Dialect statements and system orlibrary subroutines which are restricted to a particular manufacturer of installationshould be avoided if possible, or explained clearly. Analysis of the time complexity ofvarious algorithms and illustration of parallelism (potential and achieved) is highlydesirable.IV.Problems

Problems for solution by the student have to be interspersed throughout the chapter.Problems should preferably grow out of the codes. Answers should be provided to beincluded in a separate solution book or possibly in hypertext.V.References and Bibliography

Entries should state at least the author, journal, volume number, page, year and ifavailable additional information. If references are available electronically on the Inter-net, then their location should be provided.VI.Programs

Code included in a project or case study usually consists of an abstract, summary, doc-umentation, and listing. The documentation should be a detailed description of theprogram, stating the problem, method of solution, program design, input data, output(including error diagnostics), and possible the input and output data of a test run. A

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listing is optional. Long programs (more than a couple of pages) will be put in the pub-lic domain on the CSEP server where they can be copied via FTP by students andinstructors. Include source code job control instructions and documentation.

Programs should be clear to first-year graduate students and advanced undergradu-ates. Programs should grow out of the material discussed in the chapter they comewith and all numerical methods coded need to be covered either in the case study or inthe general chapters.

Submitting Proposals for New Projects and Case Studies

Projects and case studies should illustrate and expand on concepts presented in the firsttwo parts of the book, especially Part B. If a case study requires any material that shouldbe covered in Part A or B and is not already there, send a description of the suggestedadditions to the CSEP editor. If it is general enough to be included, arrangements will bemade to add it to an existing chapter, or perhaps even add a new chapter to Part B.Authors of new chapters are expected to submit a detailed outline of their material,including descriptions of the exercises, programs, examples and visualizations planned,as well as an indication of what students are to learn from these.

Send proposals, including text, programs, graphics, tables and references, to:Verena Umar

105 Computer CenterVanderbilt UniversityNashville, TN 37240phone (615)343-1615fax (615)343-1605

Proposals may also be submitted by e-mail (the preferred method). Send them to:verena@compsci.cas.vanderbilt.edu

It is our preference to receive materials typeset in Latex. Other electronic formats of sub-mission can be discussed on individual basis.

Graphics should be submitted with data and if possible electronically. All graphics will beredrawn to obtain a uniform style. Tables should be submitted electronically if possible.The following information should be provided for each author and co-author: name; title;subject, institution, and year of degree; mail address; e-mail address; number of books,papers and talks at national and internationalmeetings during the past 5 years.

Reviews

Material will be reviewed by authors and those who expressed an interest in CSEP asreviewers.

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