Department of Mathematics

Math 300: Mathematical Computing

Assignment 9

You will download this data file from the adams server, and store it on your Matlab directory. Note that you will need to be on campus or use the VPN for that link to work. The data are from the DART project, and represent passage of various species of anadromous fish past the Lower Granite Dam, from 1975 to the present. You will read the data into a Matlab script that you make. Note that the first row of the file is text describing the contents of each column of the data - you probably need to delete that line to get the data into Matlab or Octave.

Once you have the data in your script, use least squares as discussed in class, and shown in a worksheet on adams, to plot the data for steelhead passage (column 4) against the year, and to find a linear model for those numbers. Your script should make a plot similar to Figure 1.


Figure 1: Steelhead Passage

Observe that when I did this I found it necessary to use a line of the form

  fish = fish(fish(:,1)~=0,1:length(fish(1,:)));
  
in order to get rid of extraneous zeros that appeared. The matrix fish held all the data read from the file. You may not need it, but whether you do or not, include a comment in your script explaining what this line does in detail.

The assignment is turned in as an attachment to an email sent to the instructor by 9AM on Thursday, 17 November. It is worth 30 points.


The last test will take place at the final exam time, Monday 12 December, 1:30-3:30. It will be written as a one-hour in-class on-line test. As usual, you can use any resources you want. A Sample Exam is available. Note that the URL for the exam will not be emailed to all. If you need to take the exam from outside class, contact the instructor to get on the email list.




Assignment B is posted.




Most recent scores are on-line at My.math. Check the Info page. Let the instructor know if you find a discrepancy.

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