Course Syllabus
Instructor
Instructor |
Lectures |
Labs |
Office Hours |
Contact |
Burton Ma |
LSB 105 (Life Sciences Building)
Tuesday and Thursday 14:30-15:30 |
Lab 1
LAS 1002A
Tuesday 9:30-12:30
Lab 2
LAS 1002A
Tuesday 15:30-18:30 |
Monday 16:00-17:30
Wednesday 16:00-17:30
or by appointment |
LAS 2046
burton [at] cse [dot] yorku [dot] ca |
Students must attend the labs for which they are registered (to avoid having
insufficient computers for students to write the tests).
Description
This course introduces students to computer-based problem
solving techniques that can be used to approach problems in the
physical sciences, such as answering questions that require
numerical computation, as well as basic analysis of experimental
data sets and simple statistical simulations.
An integrated procedural programming, data analysis, and data
visualization platform such as MATLAB (or its open-source
equivalent OCTAVE) will be used to introduce computational
elements. Topics will include:
- Overview of the platform and computational accessories
- Fundamentals of the platform, including operational
syntax
- Data types (including cell arrays)
- Data file input/output
- Data statistics
- Basic and advanced plotting of data, including surface
and contour plots
- Procedures and control structures, including syntax,
conditional evaluation statements (IF-ELSE), and loop
programming (nested FOR loops, WHILE loop)
- Code vectorization
- User-defined functions
- Advanced functions (including nested and recursive
functions and sorting)
- Simple matrix methods (systems of linear equations)
- Random numbers, and simple Monte-Carlo simulation
(area estimation with statistical error assessment)
- Data acquisition
Prerequisistes: MATH1013
Co-requisites: PHYS1010, PHYS1410, or PHYS1420; and MATH1021 or MATH1025
Course Credit Exclusion: CSE1560, CSE1570
Textbook
Please see the textbook section of the course
website.
Format
2 hours of lectures and 3 hours of labs per week.
The labs occur in the Prism teaching laboratories in the Lassonde building.
A typical lab will focus on implementing solutions to programming problems
with some or all of the work submitted at the end of the lab (and and remaining
work submitted at a later date that will be specified during the lab). The
lab problems will be made available at the start of the scheduled lab. The
different lab sections may not necessarily be working on the same problems
each week.
The Prism teaching labs use CentOS Linux as the operating system.
Evaluation
Labs (8 marked labs): |
24% |
Test 1 (written and programming): |
20% |
Test 2 (written and programming): |
20% |
Exam (written and programming): |
36% |
Students may view their grades using the
ePost
system. All grades distributed via ePost are unoffical and are subject to
review by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
A student's final grade will be expressed as a letter grade.
Click here
for further details on the University's grading schemes.
Tests
Tests are held in the Prism teaching labs
during the regularly scheduled lab. Tests may include both written questions
and programming questions that are adminstered under labtest mode.
Labtest mode is a special test environment within the lab
where most network services have been disabled. Different lab sections can
expect to have different versions of the test. Tests are marked by the
teaching assistants and contribute to the final grade as described above.
Exam
The exam will be conducted similarly to the tests.
The exam will take place during the scheduled examination period
at the end of term at a time determined by the Registrar.
Academic Honesty
Students are expected to understand and follow the guidelines for
academic honesty described in this document.
Counselling and Disability Services (CDS)
Students requiring accommodation for the written midterm or exam should
follow the normal procedure for accommodated alternative tests and exams.
For labtests, students registered with CDS should contact the instructor
to arrange for accommodated alternative labtests. Do not submit requests
for accommodated labtests through the Registrar's Office.
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