Difference between revisions of "Software tutorial"

Revision as of 14:23, 17 December 2010

This tutorial will expand as we progress in the course. Each section has notes for both MATLAB and Python.

About the course software
Software installation
Getting started
My first program (required for tutorial 1)
for loops and while loops (required for tutorial 1)
Scripts and functions (useful for tutorial 2)
Vectors and arrays (used for tutorial 3)
Matrix operations (used for tutorial 4)
Functions as objects (used for tutorial 5 to find the zero of a function)
Creating and saving plots : important for all remaining assignments, and the take-home exam.
Integrating ODEs: a tutorial on integrating ODEs in MATLAB and Python
Least squares modelling: a tutorial on (linear regression) in MATLAB and Python
Loading data in MATLAB or Python from Excel, CSV and XML files

Not every aspect about MATLAB or Python can be covered with our tutorial (above). Here are some additional resources.

MATLAB	Python
MATLAB primer - a guide to MATLAB by Dr. Prashant Mhaskar. Introduction to MATLAB - a presentation to the 2009 CHE 3E04 class by Elliot Cameron and Eric Rodger Getting started with MATLAB 7 - a guide from the MathWorks. Online MATLAB tutorial: An MATLAB tutorial from the University of Florida. MathWorks documentation: The official MATLAB documentation MATLAB Central File Exchange: User-created MATLAB code that can be freely used.	The non-programmer's guide to Python An introductory guide to Python - for biologists, but very readable Python for computational economics - but the first chapters are an excellent intro to Python Use the money you saved from not buying MATLAB to buy this book on Learning Python, or read the Google Books version. This excellent book - Dive into Python is available in print, and on the web. Are you comfortable with MATLAB? This guide to NumPy for MATLAB users explains how to transition to Python. This page shows how to translate between MATLAB and Python. A good book for computational and engineering work - free access from McMaster computers. We need a link to the official Python tutorial - but it is more general. And finally, maybe this cartoon will convince you?

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 * Are you comfortable with MATLAB?  This [http://www.scipy.org/NumPy_for_Matlab_Users guide to NumPy for MATLAB users] explains how to transition to Python.  This [http://mathesaurus.sourceforge.net/matlab-numpy.html page shows how to translate] between MATLAB and Python.
 * A good [http://www.springerlink.com/content/978-3-540-73915-9 book for computational and engineering work] - free access from McMaster computers.
-* Of course we need a link to [http://docs.python.org/tutorial/ the official Python tutorial] - but it is more general.
+* We need a link to [http://docs.python.org/tutorial/ the official Python tutorial] - but it is more general.
+* And finally, maybe [http://xkcd.com/353/ this cartoon will convince you]?
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