Our book is intended both as a general reference for researchers and as a textbook for use in a formal course that treats numerical relativity. We envision that there are at least two different ways in which the book can be used in the classroom: as the main text for a one-semester course on numerical relativity for students who have already taken an introductory course in general relativity, or as supplementary reading in numerical relativity at the end of an introductory course in general relativity. There may be more material in the book than can be covered comfortably in a single semester devoted entirely to numerical relativity. There certainly is more material than can be integrated into a supplementary unit on numerical relativity in an introductory course on general relativity.

The latter may be true even when such a course is taught as a two-semester sequence, if the course is already broad and comprehensive without numerical relativity. There are several ways to design a shortened presentation of the material in our book without sacrificing the core concepts or interfering with the logical flow. The amount of material that must be cut out from any course depends, naturally, on the amount of time that is available to devote to the subject. One means of reducing the content while retaining the fundamental ideas in a self-contained format is to restrict the discussion to pure vacuum spacetimes, i.e., spacetimes with no matter sources.