Lecture notes for CMU 06-262 Math Methods in Chemical Engineering (Zachary Ulissi, CMU)#

This repo contains all of the lecture notes for the “06-262: Math Methods in Chemical Engineering” course at CMU. This is a sophomore-level engineering math course that covers basic linear algebra, differential equations, PDEs, numerical methods, and statistics. Obviously this is a lot to cover in one semester, so the aim is to cover the most common solution techniques and understanding for junior/senior chemical engineering classes.

The course requirements are multivariable calculus. Most CMU students have also taken a python course by the time they do this course (15-110 or 15-112) so have familiarity with python but not numerical methods / plotting / etc.

Lecture format (jupyter notebooks)#

The lectures in this repo were the ones used for the class. In 2020 the lecture format was a combination of projecting the jupyter notebooks and chalk board lecturing. I generally had the jupyter notebooks displayed at the top of the classroom and would talk through concepts and derivations, and then do all of the examples by hand on the chalk board. Students were encouraged to bring their laptops one day a week to follow along with the numerical methods examples. All lecture notes were uploaded the day of the class so students could follow along or ask questions after.

This format was adapted from the two MS graduate classes at CMU 06-623 and 06-625 that were also taught in the form of computational notebooks. You can read about some experiences by myself Computational notebooks in chemical engineering curriculum here:

  • Fani Boukouvala, Alexander Dowling, Jonathan Verrett, Zachary Ulissi, Victor Zavala. “Computational notebooks in chemical engineering curricula”. Chemical Engineering Education 2020.

Other authors / credits#

These lectures notes are a combination of many years of teaching this course at CMU, and includes contributions from Professors Katie Whitehead, John Kitchin, Lynn Walker, and others. Some of the regression content is modified from lectures notes in 06-625, which were also originally done by John Kitchin and updated by Zack Ulissi. Preparing these notes in the current form was significantly aided by Amish Chovatiya, an CMU ChemE MS graduate student.

Contact info#

  • Ulissi group website: https://ulissigroup.cheme.cmu.edu/

  • Comments/suggestions: please feel free to reach out to zulissi (at) andrew.cmu.edu