This text began as notes for a course in statistical computing for sec￾ond year actuarial and statistical students at the University of Western
Ontario. Both authors are interested in statistical computing, both as sup￾port for our other research and for its own sake. However, we have
found that our students were not learning the right sort of programming
basics before they took our classes. At every level from undergraduate
through Ph.D., we found that students were not able to produce simple,
reliable programs; that they didn’t understand enough about numeri￾cal computation to understand how rounding error could influence their
results; and that they didn’t know how to begin a difficult computational
project