Q: And more specifically for animation and visualisation?

A:

In summary:

  • graph theory
  • basic calculus, newtonian physics
  • particle systems in 2D space
It must be emphasized that students will generally start from an intuitive idea of a phenomenon, for which they should be able to find a more or less adequate formalism or model that embodies this intuition. In practice this might mean that they merely adapt an existing animation or visalization to fit their needs.