ECE6203 Analytical and Computational Methods in Engineering

Sample Questions – II
Part A
1. (a) What is extrapolation?
(b) Explain how the Linear Equation Solution Methods are useful in
Extrapolation.

2. What are Cubic-Splines?

3. List the applications of Curve Fitting.

4. Explain how the interpolation is used in computing integration of functions.

5. What are the different computational methods used for integration of

functions?

6. What are the different computational methods used for finding solutions to
differential equations?

7. Differentiate between constrained and unconstrained optimization techniques.

8. Explain the functional operations of the given commands used in MATLAB:

(a) fminsearch
(b) fminbnd
9. What is the main difference between Gradient and Non-Gradient based
optimization techniques?

10. Explain how the root finding techniques and interpolation methods are
used in optimization techniques.
 Part B
1. Fit the data points given in Table below, using the discrete least squares
polynomial of degree at most 2.

i xi yi
1 0 1.0000
2 0.25 1.2840
3 0.50 1.6487
4 0.75 2.1170
5 1.00 2.7183

2. Given the data points, use Lagrange’s method (second – order) to determine
y at x = 1.

x 0 2 3
y 7 11 28

3. Find a second – order Newton polynomial to estimate loge (2) with three
points x1 =1, x2 = 4, and x3 = 6.

4. (a) Use Simpson’s 3/8 Computational Method to integrate from a = 0 to b

= 0.8
( ) = 0.2 + 25 − 200 + 675 − 900 + 400

(b) Find the integral value of the function f(x) given in Problem 4(a)
manually.

(c) Find the relative percentage error for the results obtained in Problems
4(a) & 4(b).

5. (a) Use Euler Computational Method to solve the given ODE from t = 0 to
t = 3 with a step size of 1. The initial condition at t = 0 is y(0) = 2.

.
=4 − 0.5
(b) From the exact analytical solution for Problem 5(a) given below,
determine y from t = 0 to t = 3 with a step size of 1.

( . . )+2 .
= −
.

(c) Find the relative percentage error in each time step for results obtained.
6. (a) Estimate the derivative of the given function

( ) = −0.1 − 0.15 − 0.5 − 0.25 + 1.2

at x = 0.5 using central finite differences and a step size of h = 0.25.

(b) Find the derivative value of the function f(x) given in Problem 6(a)
manually.
(c) Find the relative percentage error for the results obtained in Problems
6(a) & 6(b).

7. Use parabolic interpolation to find an approximate minimum of the function

( )= − 2 sin
10
with initial guesses of x1 =0, x2 = 1, and x3 = 4.
8. Use the Golden-Section Search computational algorithm with 4 iterations to
find an approximate minimum of the function

( )= − 2 sin
10
within the interval from xL = 0 to xU = 4.

9. Consider the following minimization problem of Lagrange Multiplier

Method subject to a single nonlinear equality constraint:

Min f(x1, x2) = x1 + x2

s.t. h(x1, x2) = x12 + x22 – 2 = 0

Find (a) x1 and x2

(b) the minimum value of f(x1, x2).

10. Develop quadratic equations in both x and y for the data points depicted
given: (1, 2), (2, 1), and (4, 5). For the first, y = f(x), employ the quadratic
formula to illustrate that the roots are complex. For the latter, x = g(y), use
inverse quadratic interpolation to determine the Brent’s hybrid root estimate
being useful in optimization problem.