Basic and Cobol are unacceptable. I can still read APL, but you are better off using a more common language. You should look over some of the other background subject matter , which consists of selected topics that you should know from previous classes. Some describe particular subjects we will use during the semester, while others provide more detail concerning difficulties I have noticed some students have with material they never quite learned in the past. We will also review Taylor Series and how they can be used to approximate functions.
Emphasis is on predicting the accuracy of approximate numerical results.
My tentative lecture schedule is here on the web. Since computer scientists are often part of the programming team that develops those applications, the purpose of this course is to see that you know a variety of basic numerical methods, can program them on a digital computer, and are aware of how the method or the approximate representation of numbers in a digital computer affects the result of a calculation. Exercises I will assign various problems, from the text or from the collection of additional problems I have here on the web, as suggested exercises. Some of these will be used as examples in the next lecture to illustrate the methods we just covered, while the others are just a guide to the sorts of things you should be thinking about. There is a more extensive list of possible problems for various subjects where I have provided answers for your enjoyment when studying.