This book evolved from a set of notes used in introductory numerical methods courses at Stanford University, the University of New Mexico and
the University of Waterloo. These universities have two such courses, titled
something like "Numerical Computing" and "Numerical Analysis". The
numerical computing course is for students of science and engineering who
simply want to use numerical methods in their work. It lasts only one term
and has minimal mathematical prerequisites. The numerical analysis course
covers essentially the same methods, but lasts a full year. The additional time
is devoted to deeper mathematical analysis. This book is intended primarily
for the numerical computing course, but could also be used to supplement
a more theoretical text in the numerical analysis course.