CATAM News

Read CATAM News for up-to-date information about the Computational Projects and changes to the PWF network facilities.

CATAM Headlines

New this year:

20/04/12: Paper and electronic submission of Part II CATAM Projects
20/04/12: Paper and electronic submission of Part IB Additional CATAM Projects
20/04/12: Advisors on duty
25/03/12: Typographic correction to question 7 of Part IB project 2.2.
24/02/12: Advice on use of MATLAB functions in Part II project 10.7
27/01/12: Use of DocPolynom class in Part II projects 15.6 and 16.9
07/01/12: Paper submission of Part IB core projects
07/01/12: Electronic submission of Part IB core project files
21/12/11: Clarification of programming requirements in Part II project 16.9.
16/12/11: Demonstrators on duty in Lent Term
16/12/11: Clarification and typographic correction to section 2 of Part II project 9.4.
13/12/11: Additional information for Part II project 12.3.
07/11/11: Withdrawal of earlier Questions and Answers.
04/11/11: Clarification to Part II project 5.4.
02/11/11: Model answer to the Part IB Introductory Project available
16/10/11: Clarification to question 6 of Part II project 14.5.
12/09/11: Correct units for Part II project 1.1
31/08/11: Printer credit on the CATAM printers
30/08/11: Clarification to question 8 of Part II project 23.6.
30/08/11: Typographic correction to question 4 of Part IB project 2.2.
29/08/11: Are you on the correct mailing list?
29/07/11: Part II Manual online
06/07/11: Part IB Manual online

Less recent, but still relevant:

05/04/11: Use of inbuilt MATLAB routines
27/03/08: Warning - cached pages
31/01/07: Make sure you get through to the CATAM Helpline
22/04/04: File security
17/04/04: Submission of Excel and similar files
03/04/04: Presentation of your results

20th April 2012: Paper and electronic submission of Part II CATAM Projects

Paper submission of all Part II projects will take place in room EL.09 in Pavilion E of the CMS between 10am and 4pm on Wednesday 2nd May 2012. There will be directions to EL.09 (the same room as last year) from the entrance to the CMS.

As explained in the Part II Manual you will need to sign a Declaration Form (an example was given in Appendix D of the Manual). You should download the current Part II Declaration Form by clicking on this link (forms will also be available from the CMS reception on the morning of Wednesday 2nd May 2012). Please print the form double-sided. Please also make sure that you understand what you are signing, and that you have fully filled in the "Declaration of Discussions" section. In the past a few students have failed to correctly fill in their "Declaration of Discussions". If the comparison programme that we use then identifies similarities, and/or if the assessors notice similarities, this can lead to investigative interviews (please see the Computational Projects Manual section on Guidelines for Collaboration and Oral Examinations).

As also explained in the Manual, you should leave a gap 11 cm wide by 5 cm deep in the top right-hand corner on the first page of each project write-up. This is for a sticky label, so that your candidate number (which you will be given on submission day) can be added to each project. Also, while you should write the project number clearly in the top left hand corner of the first page, your name or user identifier should not appear anywhere in the write-up (including programme listings, graphs, etc.), as the scripts are marked anonymously. In addition, please remember to write or print on only one side of the paper, to leave a margin at least 2 cm wide at the left, to number each page, table and graph, and to not to use green or red pens.

Students are also required to submit electronic copies of their programs to the Project Assessors for checking. Files may be submitted up to the deadline of 4pm on Wednesday 2nd May 2012. However electronic submission is already available and you are strongly urged to perform it as soon as possible. Click here for further information. Please note that you will need to know your PWF password in order to complete electronic submission. If you cannot remember your password on the PWF you will need to ask the Computing Service to reset it. This can take some time, so check that you know your PWF password well before submission day.

For both paper submission and electronic submission the 4pm deadline on Wednesday 2nd May 2012 will be strictly adhered to (unless there are exceptional circumstances, and your Director of Studies has obtained an extension for you).

It would help if you made your paper submission as early in the day as you can (unless you like long queues), and you should make your electronic submission beforehand. Advisors will be on duty in the CATAM room from 10am until 4pm on submission day.

20th April 2012: Paper and electronic submission of Part IB Additional CATAM Projects

Paper submission of all Part IB 'additional' projects will take place in room EL.09 in Pavilion E of the CMS between 10am and 4pm on Tuesday 1st May 2012. There will be directions to EL.09 (the same room as for the Core Submission) from the entrance to the CMS.

As explained in the Part IB Manual you will need to sign a Declaration Form (an example was given in Appendix D of the Manual). You should download the current Part IB Declaration Form by clicking on this link (forms will also be available from the CMS reception on the morning of Tuesday 1st May 2012). Please print the form double-sided. Please also make sure that you understand what you are signing, and that you have fully filled in the "Declaration of Discussions" section. In the past a few students have failed to correctly fill in their "Declaration of Discussions". If the comparison programme that we use then identifies similarities, and/or if the assessors notice similarities, this can lead to investigative interviews (please see the Computational Projects Manual section on Guidelines for Collaboration and Oral Examinations).

As also explained in the Manual, you should leave a gap 11 cm wide by 5 cm deep in the top right-hand corner on the first page of each project write-up. This is for a sticky label, so that your candidate number (which you will be given on submission day) can be added to each project. Also, while you should write the project number clearly in the top left hand corner of the first page, your name or user identifier should not appear anywhere in the write-up (including programme listings, graphs, etc.), as the scripts are marked anonymously. In addition, please remember to write or print on only one side of the paper, to leave a margin at least 2 cm wide at the left, to number each page, table and graph, and to not to use green or red pens.

Students are also required to submit electronic copies of their programs to the Project Assessors for checking. Files may be submitted up to the deadline of 4pm on Tuesday 1st May 2012. However electronic submission is already available and you are strongly urged to perform it as soon as possible. Click here for further information. Please note that you will need to know your PWF password in order to complete electronic submission. If you cannot remember your password on the PWF you will need to ask the Computing Service to reset it. This can take some time, so check that you know your PWF password well before submission day.

For both paper submission and electronic submission the 4pm deadline on Tuesday 1st May 2012 will be strictly adhered to (unless there are exceptional circumstances, and your Director of Studies has obtained an extension for you).

It would help if you made your paper submission as early in the day as you can (unless you like long queues), and you should make your electronic submission beforehand. Advisors will be on duty in the CATAM room from 10am until 4pm on submission day.

20th April 2012: Advisors on duty

An advisor will be on duty in the CATAM room, GL.04, from 2pm until 4pm each day of the week beginning Monday 23 April.

On Monday 30 April, Tuesday 1 May, and Wednesday 2 May there will be an advisor on duty from 10am until 4pm since Part IB and Part II students will be preparing and submitting their projects.

25th March 2012: Typographic correction to question 7 of Part IB project 2.2.

A typographical correction has been made to the wording of question 7. A phrase which had become garbled has now been corrected to read "You may wish to carry out computations with larger values .."

24th February 2012: Advice on use of MATLAB functions in Part II project 10.7

A sentence has been added to Question 2 of Part II project 10.7 suggesting the possible use of MATLAB functions randn or normrnd to generate a sequence of random variables. This replaces previous advice on the use and method of implementation of CATAM library function InvPhiCL.

27th January 2012: Use of DocPolynom class in Part II projects 15.6 and 16.9

An appendix has been added to Project 15.6 giving the following information regarding the DocPolynom class, which may also be used in Project 16.9:

Use of this class to print or display the zero polynomial will normally result in an error message. For example the command p = DocPolynom([0]) gives rise to

??? Cell contents reference from a non-cell array object.

Error in ==> DocPolynom.DocPolynom>DocPolynom.char at 82 str = [s{:}];

Error in ==> DocPolynom.DocPolynom>DocPolynom.disp at 87 c = char(obj);

unless output is suppressed by appending ";" to the command. This issue affects only the display, not the algebraic manipulation. It may be circumvented by testing the coefficients before display, say by using isempty(find(double(p))), which returns 1 if the polynomial p is zero, and 0 otherwise.

7th January 2012: Paper submission of Part IB core projects

Paper submission of all Part IB `core' projects will take place in room EL.09 in Pavilion E of the CMS between 10am and 4pm on Tuesday 24th January. There will be directions from the entrance to the CMS.

As explained in the Part IB Manual you will need to sign a Declaration Form (an example was given in Appendix D of the Manual). You should download the appropriate Declaration Form by clicking on this link (forms will also be available from the CMS reception on the morning of Tuesday 24th January 2012). Please print the form double-sided. Please also make sure that you understand what you are signing, and that you have fully filled in the "Declaration of Discussions" section. In the past a few students have failed to correctly fill in their "Declaration of Discussions". If the comparison programme that we use then identifies similarities, and/or if the assessors notice similarities, this can lead to investigative interviews (please see the Computational Projects Manual section on Guidelines for Collaboration and Oral Examinations).

As also explained in the Part IB Manual, you should leave a gap 11 cm wide by 5 cm deep in the top right-hand corner on the first page of each project write-up. This is for a sticky label, so that your candidate number (which you will be given on submission day) can be added to each project. Also, while you should write the project number clearly in the top left hand corner of the first page, your name or user identifier should not appear anywhere in the write-up (including programme listings, graphs, etc.), as the scripts are marked anonymously. In addition, please remember to write or print on only one side of the paper, to leave a margin at least 2 cm wide at the left, to number each page, table and graph, and to not to use green or red pens.

7th January 2012: Electronic submission of Part IB core project files

Part IB students are required to submit electronic copies of their programs to the Project Assessors for checking. Files may be submitted up to the deadline of 4pm on 24th January 2012. However electronic submission is available now, and you are urged to perform it as soon as possible. Click here for further information. Please note that you will need to know your PWF password in order to complete electronic submission. If you cannot remember your password on the PWF you will need to ask the Computing Service to reset it. This can take some time, so check that you know your PWF password well before submission day.

For both paper submission and electronic submission the 4pm deadline will be strictly adhered to (unless there are exceptional circumstances, and your Director of Studies has obtained an extension for you).

It would help if you made your paper submission as early in the day as you can (unless you like long queues), and you should make your electronic submission beforehand. Demonstrators will be on duty in the CATAM room from 10am until 4pm on submission day.

21st December 2011: Clarification of programming requirements in Part II project 16.9.

A short clarification of the programming requirements has been added to section 5 which reads as follows:

Otherwise, where specified, you should write your own procedures. For example you should not use the MATLAB function deconv in answering Question 3.

16th December 2011: Demonstrators on duty in Lent Term

A demonstrator will be on duty in the CATAM room, GL.04, from 2pm until 4pm for the week starting Monday 16th January and ending Friday 20 January.

On Monday 23rd January and Tuesday 24th January there will be a demonstrator on duty from 10am until 4pm since Part IB students will be preparing, and then submitting, their Core Projects.

16th December 2011: Clarification and typographic correction to section 2 of Part II project 9.4.

A typographical correction to the increment in the first paragraph of section 2 has been withdrawn, and a clarification added to show that the increment, which is \(\mu t_0 / n\) as originally stated, is related to \( \rho \) through the relation \( \mu = \rho-\sigma^2/2\). This replaces the news item posted on 13/12/11.

13th December 2011: Additional information for Part II project 12.3.

Question 1 refers to standard integration packages which allow step size to be chosen. A link to some available packages (with comments on merits and drawbacks) can be found at http://www.mathworks.co.uk/support/tech-notes/1500/1510.html#fixed and a footnote to this page has been added.

7th November 2011: Withdrawal of earlier Questions and Answers.

The links to earlier Questions & Answers have been withdrawn, but issues relating to specific projects will continue to be listed in News. Answers to more general queries can still be found here for Part IB and here for Part II.

4th November 2011: Clarification to Part II project 5.4.

In the calculation discussed in Question 4, the quarks are to be treated as massless.

2nd November 2011: Model answer to the Part IB Introductory Project available

A model answer to the Part IB Introductory Project is now available from the CATAM webpages. The link is http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergrad/catam/IB/0pt1/answer.pdf.

Please email errors in, improvements to and comments on the model answer to catam@maths.cam.ac.uk. Please note that there has been a small correction to a typographical error in question 5 within the last two days, and the MATLAB code used to generate Figs 2-4 is now included.

16th October 2011: Clarification to question 6 of Part II project 14.5.

The first sentence of question 6 has been rewritten to read as follows:

Write a program to read pairs of numbers z and \(f/f_0\) for quasars and determine \(V\) and \(V_{max}\) in Universe models for which \(\Omega_k=0\). Then, determine the average value, \( < V/V_{max}>\), for the quasar sample in each model.

12th September 2011: Correct units for Part II project 1.1

Project 1.1 is worth 6 units. This was incorrectly stated on the Part II Manual webpage, though it was correct in the downloaded version both of the project itself and of the full manual.

31st August 2011: Printer credit on the CATAM printers

Undergraduate mathematics students are given free print credit at the start of each academic year that allows you to print to the black-and-white and colour printers in GL.04. For reasons of cost please only use the colour printer when colour output is essential. The cost of printing can be found at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/pwf/printscan/payment.html.

The amount of credit allocated depends on the year of study and is enough to cover your yearly needs. However, if you should run out for some reason, you are asked to complete a form that can be found at http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/internal/computing/pwf/PWF-print.html, where you should explain why you have used up your allotted credit; the signature of your Director of Studies in support is also required. Your application will then be reviewed and, if successful, extra credit will be added to your account.

Please note that the free print credit provided by the Faculty of Mathematics is different to the printing credit that can be bought through the PWF common balance scheme (see http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/pwf/printscan/cbprinters.html). If you use the PWF printers in Faculty of Mathematics then credit is, at first, deduced from your free print credit until it expires. However, you should be aware that after that credit is used up, future use is deducted from any PWF common balance (since the PWF printers in Faculty of Mathematics are also part of the PWF common balance scheme).

30th August 2011: Clarification to question 8 of Part II project 23.6.

The last sentence of question 8 has been rewritten to read as follows:

Use the surface density profile from question 4 to determine the fraction of the initial mass remaining at \(\tau=0.512\), and compare that with the values derived above.

30th August 2011: Typographic correction to question 4 of Part IB project 2.2.

A gremlin had put an \( h \) where there should have been an \( a\) in question 4 of Part IB Project 2.2. This has now been corrected.

29th August 2011: Are you on the correct mailing list?

As well as adding announcements to CATAM News, occasionally we will email students using the year lists maintained by the Faculty of Mathematics. You have a responsibility to read email from the Faculty, and if we send an email to one of those lists we will assume that you have read it.

After 1 October you can check that you are on the appropriate Faculty year list by referring to the https://lists.cam.ac.uk/mailman/raven webpage (to view this page you will need to authenticate using Raven if you have not done so already). You should check that either the Maths-IB or the Maths-II mailing list (as appropriate) is one of your current lists.

If you are not subscribed to the correct mailing list, please email the Faculty Office (faculty-office@maths.cam.ac.uk) with a request to be subscribed to the correct list (and, if necessary, unsubscribed from the wrong list[s]).

29th July 2011: Part II Manual online

The Manual containing the Part II Projects for 2011-12 is now available online. We would be grateful if you could draw our attention to any misprints.

6th July 2011: Part IB Manual online

The Manual containing the Part IB Projects for 2011-12 is now available online. We would be grateful if you could draw our attention to any misprints.

5th April 2011: Use of inbuilt MATLAB routines

The Helpline is receiving a number of emails on this topic.

Please see section 1.4.3 of the Introduction to the Manual: you may use any inbuilt MATLAB routine provided the project does not explicitly ask you to write your own.

However, in the interest of fairness, in the unlikely event you find an inbuilt routine which makes the project trivial in your estimation, we would appreciate your checking with the Helpline at your earliest convenience.

27th March 2008: Warning - cached pages

When checking the latest online version of a project before finalising your write-up, ensure that your computer has not 'cached', and is therefore displaying, the previous version that you accessed.

31st January 2007: Make sure you get through to the CATAM Helpline

When emailing the Helpline:

(1) Always write from your University email address (@hermes or @cam)

(2) If a project is involved, put it it the subject line: e.g., Part II project 14.5. Otherwise make it clear that the email relates to CATAM, e.g. mention CCATSL.

(3) Include a clear message in the body of the email, making clear the relevance to CATAM: e.g. I have attached the electronic versions of my Part IB core CATAM projects.

(4) Only discuss one project and, ideally, only one question in each email.

If for good reason you cannot achieve (1), be particularly careful about (2) and (3).

At first sight the above may seen rather pedantic and unnecessary. However it is the cost of modern communications: the University estimates that it receives over 6 million messages per day of which at least 90% are spam. Most is filtered by the University's spam filter, which will remove emails with no message for example. What gets through to the Helpline still needs filtering, which is done ad hoc, mainly by reference to the sender's address and the subject line.

22nd April 2004: File security

It is important that you keep backup copies of your project files on CD, memory stick or floppy disk to guard against loss by human error (accidental overwriting or deletion), or by hardware problems on your own computer or University/College fileservers.

Do not leave copies of your project files behind on the local hard disk of PWF or College computers. If someone took a copy of your work and incorporated it in one of their own programs, you might be falsely accused of unfair collaboration by the Project Assessors.

If you lose a memory stick or floppy disk containing your programs, please report it to the CATAM helpline.

The Computing Service publish these notes on file security on the PWF.

17th April 2004: Submission of Excel and similar files

Q. I am using an interactive programming system. What do I submit as my 'program'?

Q. I have used Excel to answer a project, and my spreadsheet is over 100MB. What should I submit?

Q. I have used R to answer a project. R is interactive, so there is no program as such. Should I submit the entire transcript of my R session?

A. We want to see the sequence of steps that you execute in order to produce the desired result. In a conventional programming language (e.g. C, Pascal) this is the program file. In an interactive environment (e.g. Excel or R) this is the set of commands or formulae that you type in. If your programming system does not assist you by keeping a transcript of the commands or formulae that you type in, it is your responsibility to keep a transcript yourself, perhaps in a separate text file. This is what you should submit as your 'program'.

e.g. In R or S-Plus, you can write your commands in a text file, then copy and paste them into the R console to execute them. Submit the text file as your 'program'. Tidy up the transcript of the entire R session (deleting uninformative lines or mistakes) and submit this as your 'program output'. (Users of Emacs may find the ESS package helpful for this purpose.)

e.g. In Excel, copy any Visual Basic scripts you have written and paste them into a text file. Submit this as your program. If you have used in-cell formulae only for trivial reasons (e.g. rearranging the data in order to plot it), you do not need to submit the spreadsheet as part of your program. If you have used in-cell formulae for non-trivial calculations (i.e. performing calculations which are directly related to the questions posed in the project), you should tidy up the spreadsheet so that it contains the formulae you have typed in, but not any data which you have generated, and then submit this as an additional part of your 'program'. It is highly unlikely that you have typed in over 100MB worth of formulae, so there is no need to submit a 100MB file; in fact it is unlikely that your files need to be larger than 100kB. (In Excel 2000 for Windows, you can press Ctrl+` to display formulae rather than results. With this, you can print out a bare-bones spreadsheet containing your formulae but not the data.)

3rd April 2004: Presentation of your results

As the submission deadline approaches, the Helpline receives a large number of enquiries which amount to

"Could you advise me on how to present my results?"

Often such enquiries are couched in terms of specific problems that the enquirer has met. We have to emphasise that the presentation of your results is an important part of the project and that therefore you have to use your own judgement on this. There is quite a lot of general guidance in the introductions to both the manuals, Part IB and Part II. However we cannot give advice specific to any particular project.

It might help you to think of the project as something you have been asked to investigate for an intelligent but non-expert community, to which you then have to report back the results of your findings. This is the kind of 'transferable skill' (to indulge in the current jargon) that a future employer is likely to assume you have acquired by completing these projects.