Numerical recipes understanding through optical applications

Usually mathematical abstractions are used as examples in teaching of general courses as well as in special courses such as numerical recipes. Using of examples from physics (or optics in particular) makes the course more interesting and understandable for students in optical engineering. In Applied and Computer Optics Department of ITMO University the course "Numerical Recipes in Optics" is studied via practical usage of optical image modeling and quality analysis. It helps to make studying of numerical recipes (such as numerical integration, approximation, fast Fourier transform etc.) more useful. Moreover it gives deeper understanding in mathematical models of physical processes. The most interesting exercises corresponding to different numerical recipes are presented in the paper.