EECS1560, Winter 2017
EECS1560: Introduction to Computing for Mathematics and Statistics
Winter 2017
Web page contents:
General Information
Announcements
Important Dates
Resources
Reading
Course Handouts
General Information
Instructor: Eric Ruppert
Office: Lassonde Building, room 3042
Telephone: (416) 736-2100 ext. 33979
Lectures: Mondays and Wednesdays 15:30-16:30 in room 001 of the Accolade East Building
Labs: There are three lab sections, all in room S110 of the Ross (South) Building:
- Lab section 1: Tuesdays 14:30-17:30
- Lab section 2: Thursdays 14:30-17:30
- Lab section 3: Fridays 11:30-14:30
Email: [my last name]@cse.yorku.ca (Please use a York mail account when sending me email, and start your subject line with "[1560]".)
Office hours: The course is over, so there are no more office hours.
Course Objectives
In this course, you will learn how to
- formulate computational problems in a way so that they can be solved using a computer
- use MATLAB to solve computational problems
- represent data in a computer, and use MATLAB to manipulate and plot the data
- design simple computer programmes using loops, selection and recursion
- assess the accuracy of computed solutions
Marking Scheme
| 4 lab tests (equally weighted) | 40% |
| Midterm written exam | 20% |
| Final exam | 40% |
Announcements
- (May 3) (Unofficial) final grades have now been posted. If you would like to view your final exam, you can email me to arrange an appointment.
- (Mar 30) There will be an optional review session on Monday, April 17 at 13:00 in room 105 of the Life Sciences Building. This is an opportunity for you to ask questions and hear answers to other students' questions.
- (Mar 30) There is no lab on Tuesday, April 4.
- (Mar 27) For the final exam, you will be permitted to bring with you one 8.5-by-11-inch handwritten sheet of notes. You may write on both sides of the page.
- (Mar 21) Lab test #4 will focus on material covered in labs and lectures up to March 24 (and material up to chapter 11 in the textbook). The main focus will be on 2-dimensional arrays.
- (Mar 1) Lab test #3 will focus on material covered in labs and lectures up to March 3 (and material up to Section 8.4 in the textbook). The main focus will be on 1-dimensional arrays (or vectors).
- (Feb 13) The midterm test on Wednesday, February 15 will be held in Lecture hall A on the ground floor of the Lassonde Building from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.
- (Feb 11) The midterm test on February 15 will cover chapters 1 to 5 of the textbook.
- (Feb 3) If you had a difficult time enrolling in this course (or other EECS courses), you might be interested in adding your voice to this petition.
- (Feb 2) The second lab test on Feb 7/9/10 will include material covered in lectures or labs up to the Feb 6 lecture. This corresponds to the first five chapters of the textbook.
- (Jan 18) The first lab test on Jan 24/26/27 will include material covered in lectures or labs up to the Jan 23 lecture. This corresponds to the first three chapters of the textbook. The test will consist of questions with fairly short answers. For some, you will have to write Matlab code or use Matlab to determine the answer.
- (Jan 15) Updated information on enrolment problems:
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If you would like to enrol in the course, please send me an email with the subject "1560 enrolment" as soon as possible. Include the following information: name, student number, degree programme, year of study, which lab sections you are able to attend (Tue/Thu/Fri), why you would like to enrol in the course. On January 19th, you will have to get a form from the EECS department office and have it signed by me before you can enrol. I will use the information in the email messages to decide who gets permission to enrol.
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If you would like to switch lab sections, please send me an email with the title "1560 transfer". Include the following information: name, student number, section you are enrolled in, section you would like to enrol in, reason for wanting to change. (I will handle these requests myself; I just want to know how many people will be attending each lab section because we only have a limited number of seats in the lab.)
- (Jan 2) Note that the first lab session is during the week of January 9-13. (There is no lab on January 5 or 6.)
Important Dates
| First lecture | Monday, January 9 |
| Lab test 1 | Week of January 23 (in your lab) |
| Lab test 2 | Week of February 6 (in your lab) |
| Midterm test in lecture hall A of Lassonde Building | Wednesday, February 15 |
| Family Day (university closed) | Monday, February 20 |
| Reading week (no classes) | February 20-24 |
| Lab test 3 | Week of March 6 (in your lab) |
| Drop deadline | Friday, March 10 |
| Lab test 4 | Week of March 27 (in your lab) |
| Last class | Wednesday, April 5 |
| Exam period | April 7-24 |
Resources
Textbook
We are using the following online textbook for this course. This has the advantage that exercises can be completed online, and you will get instant feedback about whether your solution is correct. You can also print chapters from the online textbook if you want a paper copy for reference.
Andre Knoesen, Rajeevan Amirtharajah, Frank Vahid and Roman Lysecky, Introduction to MATLAB, zyBooks, 2016.
To purchase access to the textbook, go to zybooks.com and sign up for an account. Enter the zybook code YORKEECS1560RuppertSpring2017 and click subscribe. The price for the textbook is 57 US$ (or approximately 77 Canadian dollars).
Other Books for Reference
- Stormy Attaway, MATLAB: A Practical Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving, 4th ed. Butterworth-Heinemann, 2016. (Available online from York library and on reserve in Steacie Library.)
- Amos Gilat, MATLAB: An Introduction with Applications, 5th ed. Wiley, 2014. (On reserve in Steacie library.)
- Munther Gdeisat and Francis Lilley, MATLAB by example. Elsevier, 2013. (Available online from York library.)
- Khalid Sayood, Learning Programming using MATLAB. Morgan and Claypool, 2007. (Available online from York library.)
Computing Resources
For this course, you will need to use your Passport York username and password to perform the lab work.
If you have forgotten your password or have not yet set it up, go to this link.
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If you are on campus, Matlab is available in the Computing Commons Labs. See the preceding link for information about those labs.
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If you have an internet connection at home, you can use Matlab through WebFAS: See this link for information about how to do this.
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If you prefer to purchase a copy of Matlab so that you can install it on your own computer, there is a student version that is cheaper than the standard version. See this link for details.
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There is also a free software package called GNU Octave which is very similar to Matlab. It is available from this link. Some differences between Octave and Matlab are described on this page.
Web Links
Reading
This schedule is approximate and may be adjusted during the term.
Try not to fall behind in the reading.
The sections refer to the course online textbook.
As you read the sections, you should also do the exercises that are scattered throughout the text.
| Week | Section |
| Jan 9 | 1 and 2.1-2.5 |
| Jan 16 | 2.6-3.4; Additional optional reading here and here |
| Jan 23 | 3.5-4.4 |
| Jan 30 | 5.1-5.5 |
| Feb 13 | 6.1-6.13 |
| Feb 27 | 7.1-7.8 |
| Mar 6 | 8.1-8.11, 8.14 (can skip 8.2 and 8.8);
Some notes for March 6 class (in a bit more depth than we had time for in class);
Optional additional reading for March 8 lecture: Sections 9.4-9.7 of this page. (Note that this classic physics textbook was written over 50 years ago, so the times given for doing arithmetic on computers are ridiculously slow.) |
| Mar 13 | 10.1-10.10 |
| Mar 20 | 11.1-11.11 |
| Mar 27 | 12.6-12.9, 13.1, 13.3-13.5, 13.8 |
| Apr 3 | 14.1-14.4, 14.9 |
Course Handouts
Updated May 3, 2017