Seminar: Variational Methods in Numerics

Dates

Requirements

Knowledge from the introductory lectures on linear algebra, analysis and numerics is required. This seminar complements this semester's lecture Numerics III. It is not necessary to attend the lecture Numerics III in order to successfully participate in this seminar.

The seminar will address several aspects of functional analysis. All required basics will be provided during the course of the seminar. In particular, it is not necessary to have attended any lecture on functional analysis.

Organizational Matters

• The organizational meeting was on Thursday, April 21st.
• The seminar will be held in English.
• There will be an introductory talk by the organizers in the first weeks of the semester.
• Each participant prepares a talk. The talk should not exceed 90 minutes, including time for questions from the audience.
• In addition, every participant prepares a handout, preferably using LaTeX. See below for more information on LaTeX.
• Roughly one week before the talk there will be a short meeting with the organizers to discuss the structure of the talk and answer questions. At this point there should already exist a draft of the handout.
• The final grade is based on the talk and the handout.

Talks

LaTeX

• LaTeX is the standard software for writing mathematical texts. There is virtually no alternative.
• You can use the example file handout.tex as a basis for your handout. See handout.pdf for a compiled version of the example. It is not mandatory to use this file. Feel free to use your own template!
• To compile the example under Linux: Open the console, navigate to the directory that contains the file handout.tex and run "pdflatex handout.tex". If no errors occured then the file handout.pdf is created in the current directory.
• For Windows users: A popular choice for working with .tex documents under windows is the editor MiKTeX. Please refer to their website for instructions on how to install the program. Once the software is installed and started, you can simply open the file handout.tex and hit the compile-button.
• Important: Error messages in LaTeX can be rather cryptic! It is recommended that you compile your document often so that it is easier to track down error sources.

Contact