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Mathematics Computing

Computer Facilities

The Department of Mathematics encourages computer use for research, teaching, outreach, and administration. Office machines can be used for:

  • Electronic mail
  • Mathematical text processing (TeX, LaTeX)
  • Symbolic computation (Maple, Matlab, Macaulay, Magma, Mathematica, etc.)
  • Graphics
  • Computational science and engineering

Faculty members have the option of either an Ubuntu Linux or Microsoft Windows desktop machine. Student offices are equipped with Ubuntu Linux machines. For more information or to request the installation of software please contact Science IT via the Submit Help Ticket page.

Accessing Resources

A Purdue career account (commonly referred to as NetID at other universities) and password also allows logging into departmental general purpose or computational servers. The general purpose Linux servers (banach or hardy) may be used, for example, when a Linux environment is needed by someone with a Windows or Mac in the office or when away from the office. The large multicore 64-bit X86 servers (maclaurin, leibniz, and gauss) are useful for numeric and other processing; maclaurin currently has 160 GB of memory, leibniz 72 GB, and gauss has 24 GB. For very large computing requirements members of the Mathematics department also have access to a cluster funded by a departmental SCREMS grant and maintained by Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP, the central IT group for campus). To ssh to Math computational linux machines from off campus, we advise either using the Purdue VPN or setting up an ssh keypair, rather than relying on a password. You don't need to access through the VPN for banach and hardy, however.

Other Available Hardware

The Mathematics department maintains publicly accessible computer labs (MATH 635 and MATH 737) that contain public printers and desktop computers. A number of laptops and projectors are available for checkout. This equipment is typically used for presentations and/or working remotely on official university business. See the receptionist in the main office to check out projectors. Laptop reservations can be made through the College of Science Submit Help Ticket page.

Purdue Information Technology (Purdue IT)

Purdue IT provides a variety of computing services for the campus, including support for instructional and research computing needs that are not specific to the department. Information about these services including the use of career accounts, obtaining Purdue IT research accounts, or other Purdue IT services can be found at the Purdue IT Services website. Purdue IT offers free short courses on a variety of topics of interest to users of their labs or systems. Purdue IT instructional labs can be reserved for occasional or regular use in courses; you should see the Schedule Deputy as far in advance as possible for scheduling since these labs are heavily used. Faculty and student discounts are available for personal purchase of Macintosh and PC compatible hardware and software through Purdue IT Shopping.

College of Science IT

The College of Science IT staff, supporting the day-to-day operation of our computer systems, has several teams with different technical focus: Unix, Macintosh, Windows, Web, etc. When requesting help, the preferred option is to use the Request Assistance link, though emailing sciencehelp@purdue.edu or calling 49-44488 are available as well depending on the situation. Once submitted the request will be assigned to the most appropriate team(s). If you have a problem with department computers or printers please report the problem using the options just mentioned.

It is University policy (and the law!) that software copyrights and license agreements be respected.

Important Resources

Department of Mathematics, Purdue University, 150 N. University Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2067

Phone: (765) 494-1901 - FAX: (765) 494-0548  Contact Us

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