MINIMIZATION OF SCALAR FIELDS: THE NELDER-MEAD METHOD

Virtual laboratories (VL) represent valuable tools for the transmission of the scientific knowledge. In the context of the nowadays university teaching, VL offer the technical career students numerous options of self-learning. In this work, a new VL has been developed by using the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of MATLAB. This interface allowed us to implement the geometric description of the Nelder-Mead method for the minimization of a scalar field in R-2. The method consists in taking a triangle and in it; replace the greater vertex by another with a smaller value. For this purpose four operations can be done on the triangle, namely, reflection, expansion, contraction and reduction. The process is repeated over and over until convergence is reached at a point considered as minimum. This laboratory can be a valuable tool for the Numerical Method subject present in most of technical and scientific careers.