| Syllabus | Links | Schedule | Grades |
Instructor - Dr. Mark Lewis
Contact Info - Office: HAS 201K, Phone: 999-7022, E-mail: mlewis@trinity.edu
Office Hours - 4:30-6:00 M, 3:30pm-6:00pm W, 9:30-11:00 and 1:30pm-6:00pm R, or by appointment. I'm in my office a lot so you should free to drop by. If you are coming from lower campus you can always call or write a short e-mail to see if I'm in and available at that time. My afternoon office hours will be "open lab" times where I will be in the lab to help work you through questions on your assignments. The Monday and Wednesday open labs will be in HAS 228 and the Thursday open lab will start in HAS 200 then move to 228.
Course Meetings - 10:30am MWF in HAS 228
Texts - There are two required texts for this course: "Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics" and "Mastering Matlab 7". If you are going to do a significant amount of Perl coding I also recommend "Learning Perl".
Course Description – This course is intended to give you a formal introduction to many of the computational techniques that are used through the sciences. It focuses on the two broad areas of numerical computation and data processing/data mining. You will explore these areas looking at a variety of problems from different scientific areas.
There are a number of different objectives for this course. The course is intended primarily for science majors, especially those working toward the interdisciplinary minor in Scientific Computing. As such, the primary objective of this course is to make you a more compentent scientists when it comes to the use of computational resources. Part of this process is teaching you how to use certain tools, in particular specialty languages commonly used to solve problems in the sciences. Another aspect of the course is the process of opening up "black boxes" that are commonly seen in scientific computation. A common issue for scientists using computers in their work is a lack of understanding of what their tools really do. Proper use of software requires an understanding of what the software does. This is especially true when things aren't doing what you expect them to.
As with all of the courses that I teach, this course should also make you think. You should not only learn content, but how to apply that content and hopefully you will find that by the end of the semester, you look at problems you face in science or other classes with a different perspective.
Grading – The grade for this course will come from four different areas: assignments, projects, tests, and quizzes. A brief description of each follows.
Assignments (20%) – Over the course of the semester, you will be given 10 small assignments that test whether you are able to apply the things that we are discussing in class. They all count evenly so none is a significant factor on your grade alone. These provide you with a chance to test yourself and explore the options of what you can do.
Projects (40%) – There will also be two larger projects during the course of the semester. These projects will have you solving problems from the broad classifications of topics that we discuss in the course. For each project you will have a set of options for exactly what problem you solve using the methods that we have covered. The projects should be done in groups of 2 or 3 though if a student feels strongly about solving a certain problem and can't find a partner, he/she may work on it alone. For each project, the team will submit the working code, a write-up, and evaluations of group performance. These constitute the largest single chunk of your grade.
Tests (30%) – The next largest component of your grade after projects comes from the tests. There will be a midterm and a final and each will count equally toward your average. These will test your individual understanding of the concepts that are covered in the course. Test questions can pull from assignments or projects. The midterm will happen in class as stated on the schedule and the final is scheduled for the normal final exam time for our class meeting time (8:30am Wednesday, 5/7).
Quizzes (10%) – Over the course of the semester you will be given 6 quizzes. The lowest of these will be dropped. The quizzes serve three purposes in this course. They help you to gauge how well you understand the concepts, they help me see what progress different students are making, and they help you to be prepared for the tests which count significantly more toward your grade. This last objective is accomplished by the fact that the quizzes consist of questions similar in style to what will be given on the exams.
All work that is turned in as part of this course will be pledged (assuming you are in a year that it part of the honor code). Unless otherwise noted, all work that you turn in is to be completed by you. The obvious excpetion is the collaboration on the group work. I support students studying together and working together to understand the concepts of the course. Just make sure that what you hand in to me in the end is material that you yourself produced and reflects your abilities and understanding.