Student participant costs in NSF budgets counts as direct cost

A common budget question gets asked about students who participate in the National Science Foundation Education and Human Resources NSF EHR grants and get paid for items such as focus group participation.  Does it count as direct cost?  Yes, it does.  Just read the language on page 53 (Page II-19) of Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (NSF 19-1)

Human subject payments should be included on line G6 of the NSF budget under “Other Direct Costs,” and any applicable indirect costs should be calculated on the payments in accordance with the organization’s federally negotiated indirect cost rate.

Third Edition of Programming Textbook

We have just published the third edition of the textbook on programming with MATLAB.   It is available for purchase at http://www.lulu.com/shop/autar-kaw-and-benjamin-rigsby-and-ismet-handzic-and-daniel-miller/introduction-to-programming-concepts-with-matlab-third-edition/paperback/product-24333322.html

The book is intended for an introductory course in programming in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields while using MATLAB as the programming language. MATLAB is a popular computational software package used in universities and industries alike.

This textbook differentiates itself from others in two specific ways.

1. The textbook is suitable for the many engineering departments throughout the nation that no longer teach a 3-credit hour programming course. They weave programming and mathematical software packages such as MATLAB in courses such as Foundations of Engineering, Freshmen Design, Modeling of Systems, Engineering Analysis, Numerical Methods, etc. This book is highly suitable for such audiences. To achieve these goals and make the access far-reaching, we have been deliberate in keeping the lessons short in length so that instructors can easily choose the course content in a modular way.
2. The textbook is a stand-alone resource for learning programming where the lectures complement the textbook rather than vice versa. This is because of the reason above where in-classroom time is truncated, and therefore students need to be more self-taught. For this reason, we have been meticulous when selecting and organizing the textbook content to include fundamental and application programming problems that prepare students well for other problems they will solve in academia and industry.

The book has nine modules which have been each broken down by lessons. There are 42 lessons in all and depending on the learning outcomes of the course, an instructor can choose to assign only necessary lessons. Modules 1-3 focus on MATLAB and programming basics like the MATLAB program interface, programming variables, different types of data, debugging, plotting, and applications to science and engineering problems. In Module 4, we show the use of MATLAB for basic mathematical procedures learned in the engineering courses including nonlinear equations, integration, differentiation, simultaneous linear equations, interpolation, regression, and ordinary differential equations. In Modules 5-8, the user is introduced to basic programming concepts of conditional statements, repetition (loops), and custom functions. In Module 9, program input/output is shown with writing to and reading from external files as well as navigating directories with MATLAB. Important appendices include a primer on matrix algebra, a collection of mini-projects, and a introduction to animating plots in MATLAB. Appendix A provides a primer on matrix algebra. Appendix B contains a set of mini-projects. Appendix C demonstrates how to make animated plots in MATLAB.

Each lesson contains screenshots of actual MATLAB programs that are used to help illustrate the concepts presented. More than 120 complete programs are shown throughout this book to demonstrate to the reader how to use programming concepts. The book is written in a USA-Today style question-answer format for a quick grasp of the concepts.

The purpose of this book is to provide the reader with a firm basic understanding of MATLAB syntax and fundamental programming concepts. Each lesson contains MATLAB programs that are used to help illustrate the concepts presented. By no means do the authors claim to present every MATLAB command, function, application, or programming concept in existence.

Time it takes to find a determinant

To make the point of how inefficient it is to find the determinant of a matrix by the cofactor method, I wrote a program in MATLAB to demonstrate this.  A google search for a program written in any language to find the determinant by using the cofactor method was not available beyond a 4×4 matrix.  So, I wrote one that finds the determinant of matrices of up to 12×12 order.

I ran the program on an Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8500 CPU @3.00GHz PC.  Here is a table of the CPU time it took in seconds to find the determinant of a matrix as a function of its order.
______________________________________
Order of matrix               CPU Time to Find
Determinant (s)
______________________________________
6×6                                           0.015625
7×7                                           0.046875
8×8                                           0.203125
9×9                                           0.828125
10×10                                        5.14063
11×11                                       52.6406
12×12                                   623.953
______________________________________

If one continues to do this for a 25×25 matrix, it is estimated that it would take $8.1821198 \times 10^{17}$ seconds which is more than 25 billion years, and we all know that the estimated age of the universe is less at about 13.77 billion years.

The trend of the approximate time it takes to find the determinant of the next order of the matrix, nxn is approximately n times the time it takes to find the determinant of a (n-1)x(n-1) matrix.  For example, it took a time of 52.6406 seconds for finding the determinant of a 11×11 matrix, while it would be estimated to take approximately 12×52.6406=631.7 seconds for finding the determinant of a 12×12 matrix.  This is close to the 623.953 seconds it actually took.

The above approximate time calculations are in concurrence with the note written by Professor A.J. Wise in 1969, where he showed that the number of arithmetic operations required to evaluate a nxn determinant by cofactor method is given by [n!e]-2, and hence n!e for large n and the time it takes to find the determinant of the next order of the matrix, nxn is approximately n times the time it takes to find the determinant of a (n-1)x(n-1) matrix

Since the arithmetic operation required here are just addition, multiplication and subtraction, the computation time could be crudely estimated as 4Tn!e for large n, where T is the clock cycle time and we assume that an addition or a multiplication or a subtraction each use 4 clock cycle times.  Does it match?

For a 3.00 GHz machine, $T={1}/({3 \times 10^9})$ seconds to give an approximate time for a 12×12 matrix determinant calculation to be $4 \times {1}/{(3 \times 10^9)} \times 12! e = 1.736 seconds$.  It is not even of similar order.  Many items go into calculating CPU time for a numerical algorithm, but to do a comparative analysis, these calculations are quite helpful.

This post is brought to you by

• Holistic Numerical Methods Open Course Ware:
• the textbooks on
• the Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) available at

New site for the Numerical Method MOOC

Our MOOCs on Numerical Methods that were offered on canvas.net site have been moved to a new CANVAS Free for Teachers site.  Current students can continue to use the current MOOCs indefinitely.

For future students, the two-part MOOC now has been combined into one and it is accessible at any time.   There are no deadlines to start or finish.  To enroll, just click this link https://canvas.instructure.com/enroll/KYGTJR and you are on your way to learn Numerical Methods via audiovisual lectures, textbook content and online assessments.

This post is brought to you by

• Holistic Numerical Methods Open Course Ware:
• the textbooks on
• the Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) available at

Using Watu quizzes and Latex in WordPress

Many years ago, I modified a JavaScript code to develop online quizzes for Numerical Methods.  An example of that is here – right click to “View Page Source”. http://nm.mathforcollege.com/mcquizzes/01aae/quiz_01aae_introduction.html

The above quiz is adequate but looks vintage and I am currently in the process of migrating my whole numerical methods site to WordPress.  As part of this migration, I tried to update the JavaScript code to work on WordPress but that turned out to be above my pay grade.

After much searching, I found the WATU quiz plugin and am using it to redevelop the quizzes from scratch with much of the text being cut and paste from old quizzes.

WATU is quite versatile but I faced issues with rendering of the equations.  For that I use the WP-Katex plugin.  Simply put the equations between the  tagname latex in brackets []  followed by /latex in brackets [], and this shortcode works.  I would show an example to illustrate the use of the shortcode, but it gets rendered.  See usage here.

This use of latex shortcode worked well for the question statements in the quiz but when latex shortcode was put in the distractors, equations would show up with weird spacing.  This was resolved quickly by WATU support where they suggested to edit the WATU style.css file.  See https://wordpress.org/support/topic/latex-not-displaying-properly-in-multiple-choice-answers/ for the solution.  It worked.

Now, another Latex issue cropped up when a user would submit a quiz  and it shows the right answers to the user.  The equations written in Latex would not get rendered and instead it would show the linear form of the equations.   Those were resolved by going to general settings in the WATU quizzes and check marking quizzes to not use Ajax.

WATU is a complete solution for posting online quizzes on the web for student practice.  I am not using WATU to collect data or to assign a grade, but these capabilities do exist in WATU.

See the new version of the quiz I created now on WordPress: https://numericalmethods.autarkaw.com/quiz-chapter-01-01-introduction-to-numerical-methods-2/  Please do not bookmark the quiz as this is a test website and I will be migrating the test website to the original site (http://mathforcollege.com) by the time Fall semester starts.  This will create the least disruption to maintain legacy of open course ware.

This post is brought to you by

• Holistic Numerical Methods Open Course Ware:
• the textbooks on
• the Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) available at

Reducing ordinary differential equations to state variable matrix form

To be able to solve differential equations numerically, one has to reduce them to a set of first order ordinary differential equations – also called the state variable form.  By writing them in a matrix form, the equations become conducive for programming in languages such as MATLAB.  Here is an example of this reduction to state variable matrix form.

This post is brought to you by

• Holistic Numerical Methods Open Course Ware:
• the textbooks on
• the Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) available at

Synergistic Activities on NSF Proposals

The new 2019 NSF proposal guidelines effective February 25, 2019, have a change in how synergistic activities are reported. The change is described as follows.

Chapter II.C.2.f(i)(d), Synergistic Activities, has been revised to specify that a list should include up to five distinct examples that demonstrate the broader impact of the individual’s professional and scholarly activities that focuses on the integration and transfer of knowledge as well as its creation.”

The complete language is as follows.
“A list of up to five examples that demonstrate the broader impact of the individual’s professional and scholarly activities that focuses on the integration and transfer of knowledge as well as its creation. Examples could include, among others: innovations in teaching and training (e.g., development of curricular materials and pedagogical methods); contributions to the science of learning; development and/or refinement of research tools; computation methodologies and algorithms for problem-solving; development of databases to support research and education; broadening the participation of groups underrepresented in STEM; and service to the scientific and engineering community outside of the individual’s immediate organization.”

Well, for submission to an NSF grant due February 28, 2019, I revised my synergistic activities as follows. I want to know if this does or does not follow the guidelines. What would you change? I am having issues with the language of “list”, and “distinct”. Who can one contact at NSF for clarification? This does not seem to be a question for the program manager.

1. Conducted four workshops on engineering education internationally during a 2018 Fulbright Specialist program at Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia.  The four topics were flipped classrooms, the scholarship of teaching and learning, massive open online courses, and improving student performance through learning strategies.
2. Guest Editor, ASEE Advances in Engineering Education, Flipped Classrooms in STEM, 2016.  This special issue consisted of eight papers that showed how to implement and assess flipped classrooms in a variety of settings.
3. Developed, revised, assessed and refined holistic and customized web-based resources on Numerical Methods (http://numericalmethods.eng.usf.edu) and corresponding MOOCs on Numerical Methods and Introduction to Matrix Algebra.  The OCW receives 1,000,000+ annual page views, 2,000,000+ annual views of YouTube videos on NumericalMethodsGuy channel, 100,000+ annual views on Numerical Methods Guy blog.
4. Developed a unique textbook (adopted by 70 universities worldwide) and accompanying software PROMAL for undergraduates on the topic of Mechanics of Composite Materials published in 1997 (first edition) and 2005 (second edition) by CRC Press. This includes continued development of PROMAL – instructional software package for Mechanics of Composite Materials since 1985. More than 80 universities and many self-study students all over the world use PROMAL. The textbook has been translated to Persian and Turkish.
5. Designed open source software MCTestAnalysis for analyzing and refining multiple-choice tests based on the analytical framework developed by Jorion, et al (2016) used for the validity of concept inventories. The open source software includes results such as item difficulty, item discrimination, Cronbach alpha, model estimation, item characteristic curves, tetrachoric, and scree plots.