Periodically
Each course covers a preannounced topic in mathematics. The topics chosen for 198 have little or no advanced mathematics course prerequisites.

Current Special Topics

MATH 198A - Matrix Algebra and Applications

Computational methods for matrix analysis are introduced; these include LU decomposition, Cholesky decomposition, singular value decomposition, and QR decomposition. Various algorithms for these decompositions are covered in detail and implemented using MATLAB. Applications of these methods, including dimension reduction, principal component analysis, and eigenvalue problems, are discussed.