CATAM News

Read CATAM News for up-to-date information about the Computational Projects and changes to the Desktop Services' / Managed Cluster Service' (DS/MCS) network facilities.

General | Part IB | Part II | Old Perennials

General items:

18/09/14: Clarifications re Electronic Submission

Part IB Projects:

17/10/14: Model answer to the Part IB Introductory Project available
10/10/14: Introductory Project: Lecture on 20 October 2014
05/10/14: Introduction to LaTeX: Lecture and Labs
06/09/14: Minor correction to Part IB Project 1.1
31/07/14: Part IB Manual online

Part II Projects:

05/10/14: Introduction to LaTeX: Lecture and Labs
18/09/14: Minor clarification to Part II Project 5.3
18/09/14: Minor clarification to Part II Project 2.10
18/09/14: Minor clarification to Part II Project 1.8
17/08/14: Minor correction to Part II Project 15.1
13/08/14: Minor correction to Part II Project 20.2
04/08/14: Minor clarifications to Part II Project 3.1
31/07/14: Part II Manual online

Less recent, but still relevant:

27/03/08: Warning - cached pages
31/01/07: Make sure you get through to the CATAM Helpline
22/04/04: File security

Details

10 October 2014: Introductory Project: Lecture on 20 October 2014

A lecture on the Introductory Project will be given for Part IB students at 9am on Monday 20 October 2014 in Mill Lane, Lecture Room 3.

5 October 2014: Introduction to LaTeX: Lecture and Labs

Part IB and Part II students are invited to attend a one-hour lecture by Dr Stephen Eglen, Introduction to LaTeX. LaTeX is a document typesetting system that excels at typesetting mathematical and scientific manuscripts. This lecture is to help those students who wish to use LaTeX to typeset their CATAM submissions. (Note: it is not compulsory to learn LaTeX -- you are free to choose your own program, such as Libre Office or Microsoft Word, for your CATAM submissions.)

Lab sessions will be held after the lecture to get hands-on experience with LaTeX. The lecture and labs are aimed at those who have no prior experience of LaTeX.

The lecture will be given in MR2 on the following dates:

Th 16 Oct 1-2pm (Part IB students)
Tu 21 Oct 1-2pm (Part II students)

To sign up to one of the labs following the lectures (to be held in the CATAM Room, GL.04), visit the CATAM 14-15 site on CamTools and choose from the available Introduction to LaTeX sessions. There are limited spaces available; more may be held if there is sufficient demand.

18 September 2014: Minor clarification to Part II Project 5.3

In paragraph (c) of Section 6 the instruction to "draw or plot" has been replaced by "plot" to clarify that computer-generated graphs are expected.

18 September 2014: Minor clarification to Part II Project 2.10

It has been made clear that, whereas almost all graphs, including labels, annotations, etc., need to be computer-generated, the sketch requested in Question 1 is one of the relatively few cases where a scanned hand-drawing is acceptable for electronic submission.

18 September 2014: Clarifications re Electronic Submission

A number of minor edits have been made to both the Part IB Introduction and the Part II Introduction to the CATAM Manuals concerning electronic submission.

• A note has been added stating that if it will prove difficult for you to produce electronic write-ups, e.g. because of a disability, then you should contact the CATAM Helpline as early in the academic year as possible.
• It has been emphasised that hard-copy submissions and electronic submissions must be identical.
• It has been clarified that labels, annotations, etc. to graphs, as well as the graphs themselves, need to be computer-generated in almost all cases. In a very few projects, where a sketch (or similar) is asked for, a scanned hand-drawing is acceptable. Such exceptions are noted explicitly in the project description.

18 September 2014: Minor clarification to Part II Project 1.8

It has been made clear that, whereas almost all graphs, including labels, annotations, etc., need to be computer-generated, the sketch requested in Question 1 is one of the relatively few cases where a scanned hand-drawing is acceptable for electronic submission.

6 September 2014: Minor correction to Part IB Project 1,1

A minor correction has been made to equation numbering in Part IB Core Project 1.1 to clarify references in the text to the first two equations.

17 August 2014: Minor correction to Part II Project 15.1

A minor addition has been made to the second sentence of Section 3, which now begins

The Euler test base $$a$$, for an odd integer $$N$$, is to compute $$a^{(N-1)/2}$$ mod $$N$$ and check if this is $$\pm 1$$ and equal to the Jacobi symbol ..

13 August 2014: Minor correction to Part II Project 20.2

In Question 4 the inequality $$\lambda \geqslant 1$$ has been replaced with $$\lambda \geqslant \frac{2}{3}$$, so that the question now reads

Question 4. Prove that for $$\lambda \geqslant \frac{2}{3}$$ the simulation is useless. Calculate the optimal value of $$\lambda$$.

4 August 2014: Minor clarifications to Part II Project 3.1

Some [very] minor clarifications have been made to the text of Part II Project 3.1.

31st July 2014: Part IB Manual online

The Manual containing the Part IB Projects for 2014-15 is now available online. If perchance you note any misprints, we would be grateful if you could draw them to our attention.

However familiar you already are with computing, you will need to read the Introduction to the Manual before starting either on the Introductory Project 0.1 (for which a solution will be posted early in the Michaelmas Term), or on the Core Projects 1.1 and 1.2 (which are due to be submitted at the beginning of the Lent Term). Please note that there are a number of changes from previous years, not least in that you are required to submit your project reports both as hard-copy and electronically. In particular you will be asked to submit your write-ups electronically in Portable Document Format (PDF) form. Please see the Introduction to the Manual for more details.

Please note that while there are no quality marks, i.e. alphas and betas, for CATAM, the maximum contribution to the final merit mark is roughly the same (averaging over the alpha weightings) as for a 16-lecture course.

Please also make sure you familiarise yourself with the section on Unfair Means, Plagiarism and Guidelines for Collaboration in the Introduction to the Manual.

31st July 2014: Part II Manual online

The Manual containing the Part II Projects for 2014-15 is now available online. If perchance you note any misprints, we would be grateful if you could draw them to our attention.

However familiar you feel you already are with the Computational Projects course, you will need to read the Introduction to the Manual. There are a number of changes from last year, not least in that you are required to submit your project reports both as hard-copy and electronically. In particular you will be asked to submit your write-ups electronically in Portable Document Format (PDF) form. Please see the Introduction to the Manual for more details.

As was the case last year, while there are no quality marks, i.e. alphas and betas, for CATAM, the maximum contribution to the final merit mark is the same as the maximum for a 16-lecture course.

Please also make sure you familiarise yourself with the section on Unfair Means, Plagiarism and Guidelines for Collaboration in the Introduction to the Manual.

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:

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

(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 Managed Cluster Services (MCS) 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 MCS.

• © Faculty of Mathematics, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 0WA.
Page last saved: 17th October 2014 by Webmaster