Scientific Computing Department (2/2)

السلام عليكم و رحمة الله 

and here's part 2 of that post, where I'll talk about second term in SC.

Second term courses:

1. Computational Geometry

One of my favorites. The course book was an amaaaazing one.

It talks about some Geometry algorithms and how to implement them, like lines intersections detection, polygon triangulation, Voronoi diagrams, space partitioning, ... etc.

Practical part was the most interesting thing. Here's the package we made at the end of the course.

Mid term exam was optional, the doctor left it up to us to choose whether to take a written exam or to pick a topic from the book and explain it to other students in the department. If they understand what you'll teach them, you take the marks, otherwise, you take nothing :D

Final exam was very easy and -surprisingly- doesn't depend on how much you memorize! سبحان الله !! it was the second time for me to see such an exam in FCIS, after the Data Structures exam.

2. Environmental and Global Changes

I didn't realize how exactly should this course be useful for us until we had reached the mid-terms. At the first weeks, we were solving some equations that model how population increases,  energy balance, and some other environmental topics..
At the end, we were able to model some water pollution problems.. and that wasn't interesting..
Exams were very expected, and the practical part was almost nothing! some Matlab tasks..


3. Distributed Computing
It was supposed to be a distributed computing course, but we ended up with a very weak networks course :S anyway its practical part was the only useful thing. Some MPI, openMP and openCL tasks. It was like an extension to the HPC course of the first term..


4. Theory of Computation
It was all about "prove the proven" :D
I was waiting for this course since I was in the second year! I found a book talking about theory of computations in my brother's stuff and read some chapters in it. In the fourth year, it wasn't as I expected it to be, and that was disappointing for me. Anyway I'm happy that I passed its exam at least..

Practical part was somehow interesting. We implemented a universal Turing machine.

Theory of Computations is a common course between SC and CS.


5. ITI Selected Topic

Mine was Microsoft CRM. I didn't choose it by my own will :D so I didn't like it at all, and considered it as a waste of time..
I think next year they should use a better way to assign students to tracks..


Those were second term courses, I hope these 2 parts summary would help new comers to SC إن شاء الله, or help new 4th year students in deciding for the department.  

Computational Geometry Package

السلام عليكم و رحمة الله

In the Computational Geometry course, we were required to deliver a package containing some algorithms implementations, like:
- Line intersections tester, with the naive way and sweep line algorithms:

- Convex polygon constructor, also with naive and Graham Hull algorithms:

- Polygon triangulation algorithm:
I liked this one a lot, I made it in the package delivery day morning :D me and Eman used to draw some polygons on my laptop for tracing :D

- and finally, the DCEL (Doubly Connected Edge List) data structure.

I built the data structure itself, tested its functions, and didn't know what to do with it :D so delivered it as it is! 

You can try them from here.