MTH5001 - Introduction to Computer Programming - 2023/24
Topic outline
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ASSESSMENT & MARKING CRITERIA
There will be two in-term tests: one in week 7 and one in week 12, each of them counting 10% towards your final mark, and a final project which counts 80%.. More information under the assessment tab.
FEEDBACK
Your feedback comes in many forms:
- Weekly Quizzes with specific feedback
- Weekly lab sheets
- Additional list of exercises (with solutions in due time) for you to practice
- Availability to ask questions during or after lectures
- Participation in IT Labs throughout the week - these provide you with a unique opportunity to work with other students and explore ideas from the module in further depth. Labs are also a more relaxed environment for you to get advice and guidance for your course from academic members of staff, who will provide helpful comments. One of these labs will be online.
- Personalised feedback during office hours - Office hours are also an opportunity for you to get 1 on 1 help for any additional support you may need. You can also contact the lecturer by email with any queries you might have.
- Any other types of feedback specific to the module
- PASS (Peer Assisted Study Support) – get help and feedback from higher-year students (mentors) in a friendly, informal environment.
Feedback is not just written comments on a piece of work. Please make sure that you actively engage with all these feedback opportunities, as they are there to help you learn and gain confidence in tackling unfamiliar problems!
MEET YOUR LECTURERS
Your lecturers for the module are Prof. Thomas Prellberg and Dr. Lennart Dabelow.
Thomas is Professor of Mathematics at QMUL, and a member of the Dynamical Systems & Statistical Physics research group. His research interests span several areas of mathematics and theoretical physics, including combinatorics, statistical physics, and the mathematical and computational modelling of polymers, where he has published over 120 papers. Throughout his academic career he has used extensively computer programming for computer simulations, designing and implementing algorithms for large-scale simulations. At QMUL he has taught Python modules for several years, modules he also designed and created.
Lennart is a Lecturer in Applied Mathematics. A central goal of his research is to understand the emergence of macroscopic regularity from microscopic complexity: Starting from well-known and experimentally established laws for the microscopic degrees of freedom, he aims at deriving effective descriptions for the macroscopically observable behavior of systems with a large number of constituents. He uses Python, among other programming languages, for numerical experiments and explorations of these systems as well as for analyzing the resulting data.The on-campus IT labs for the module are supported by Ivelina Mladenova, Norberto Lucero-Azuara, Adam Onus, Marta Niedostatek, Sam Brady, and Yuhan Li.READING LIST
The lecture notes and lab materials will define the content of the module, but if you would like some additional reading material, then you can find additional literature and exercises in the reading list tab.
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View all general news and announcements from the your module leaders.
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There will be two in-term tests (counting 10% each), in weeks 7 and 12, and a final project which counts 80% of the marks.
The in-term tests will have a quiz format. You will be able to practice quizzes every week.
Weekly quizzes are an excellent way of checking if you master the minimum (and a way to practice for the tests), but the bulk of the learning will take place while you practice your coding skills (lab and additional exercises).
For the final project you will need to upload a Jupyter Notebook which addresses an extended programming question. The project will basically assess your coding skills.Below you can find:
- In weeks 7 and 12 we will upload the tests which will count 10% each towards your final mark. Concrete information on this will be provided in due time.
- Additional information on the final project.
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Your week 7 mid-term test will take place over a 24h period, starting on Monday, March 4, 9am and ending on Tuesday, March 5, 9am.
Once you start the test, you will have two hours to complete it or until the 24h period ends, whatever happens earlier.
While the test might be substantially shorter to complete, please assume that you will need about 2 hours from the moment you start to the moment you submit it.
The test covers all material in lectures and tutorials from week 1 to week 6.
The test is open book. This means:
- You may access any printed and online resources, however,
- You may not communicate, nor attempt to communicate, with anyone else, nor solicit assistance in any way (e.g. via email, Facebook, WhatsApp, Chegg, Stackexchange, etc.).
The test itself will be in the format of a QMPlus quiz (just like the weekly quizzes).
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Your week 7 mid-term test will take place over a 24h period, starting on Monday, April 8, 9am and ending on Tuesday, April 9, 9am.
Once you start the test, you will have two hours to complete it or until the 24h period ends, whatever happens earlier.
While the test might be substantially shorter to complete, please assume that you will need about 2 hours from the moment you start to the moment you submit it.
The test covers all material in lectures and tutorials from week 1 to week 11.
The test is open book. This means:
- You may access any printed and online resources, however,
- You may not communicate, nor attempt to communicate, with anyone else, nor solicit assistance in any way (e.g. via email, Facebook, WhatsApp, Chegg, Stackexchange, etc.).
The test itself will be in the format of a QMPlus quiz (just like the weekly quizzes).
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Format of the final project
Your main assessment in this module takes the form of a project/report, worth 80% of your final mark.
Note: this is also the synoptic assessment for any resit students, with identical deadlines.From April 1, the project will be available to download below. Click on the "FINAL PROJECT" assignment and download the file "Project-2023-24.ipynb". Note that, in addition to the Jupyter notebook, there is one additional file "project.py" which you will need to download and save to the same location as the Jupyter notebook.
The project is due 11:59pm on Saturday, May 4.
Your lecturers will respond to project-related emails until 5:00pm on May 2, only. It is strongly recommended that you start your project as soon as possible, and have it finished by this time, leaving the final two days for final proofreading/checking/submission only.
Full instructions are provided in the project Jupyter notebook.
Good luck!
Note: you will need to be logged in to QMPlus in order to access the project.
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Here we will list answers to questions received via email or chat if they are likely to be of general interest. The first few questions are standard ones we receive every year, to check about questions specific for this year's project, please scroll down.
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The programming language used for this module is Python, via the web-based Jupyter Notebook application. Please see the week 1 exercise sheet for information on how to access Jupyter Notebook on college computers and/or install it on your personal computer.
The content of the module is (roughly) as follows; more details are given in the week 1 lecture notes:
- Week 1: Introduction to Jupyter Notebook and Python.
- Weeks 2-6: Programming fundamentals (data types, variables, functions, conditional statements, loops).
- Week 7: First in-term test.
- Weeks 8-11: Further programming, and mathematical & data analysis applications.
- Week 12: Second in-term test.
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This is a first introduction to computer programming. Learning outcomes include:
- Understand the logic of computer programming
- Be able to read and implement basic codes in Python
- Master the basic elements of the programming language Python as well as its applications for scientific computing, including: different data variables and data structures, logic (if statements), iterative structures (loops), built-in functions as well as standard Python packages.
- Be able to code basic mathematical algorithms in. Python
- Be able to use the programming language Python in simple data analysis problems
- Gain independence to use Python in future projects
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What's covered in this week?
- Introduction to the module
- Jupyter Notebooks
- Using Python as a calculator
- Using Python to plot graphs
Activities for this week:
- Familiarise yourself with how to start Jupyter Notebook
- Attend the Lectures on Tuesday and Friday
- Do the Coursework and attend one of the IT labs
- Do the Quiz at the end of the week
Content for this week:
- Lectures can be accessed here
- Notes for this week are available here
- Coursework download and submission for this week are available here
- Set of additional exercises for practice: here
- This week's quiz (available at the end of the week): here
- This week's lab session walkthrough (available after the labs): here
Optional:
- See below for some help with AppsAnywhere
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What's covered in this week?
- examples for modules
- input/output basics
- sequences: lists, tuples, ranges
- mutable and immutable types
- list comprehensions
Activities for this week:
- Attend the Lectures on Tuesday and Friday
- Do the Coursework and attend one of the IT labs
- Do the Quiz at the end of the week
Content for this week:
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What's covered in this week?
- More on sequences: slicing
- Generators
- Plotting
- Built-in functions
Activities for this week:
- Attend the Lectures on Tuesday and Friday
- Do the Coursework and attend one of the IT labs
- Do the Quiz at the end of the week
- Please fill in the anonymous early feedback questionnaire from February 6
Content for this week:
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What's covered in this week?
- User-defined functions
- Functions as variables
- Lambda functions
- Creating Modules with user-defined functions
Activities for this week:
- Attend the Lectures on Tuesday and Friday
- Do the Coursework and attend one of the IT labs
- Do the Quiz at the end of the week
- Please remember to fill in the anonymous early feedback questionnaire by February 13
Content for this week:
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What's covered in this week?
- Boolean type
- Boolean operators
- conditional statements (IF)
- recursive functions
Activities for this week:
- Attend the Lectures on Tuesday and Friday
- Do the Coursework and attend one of the IT labs
- Do the Quiz at the end of the week
Content for this week:
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What's covered in this week?
- For loops
- While loops
- Application: evaluation of (infinite) sums
- Infinite loops
Activities for this week:
- Attend the Lectures on Tuesday and Friday
- Do the Coursework and attend one of the IT labs
- Do the Quiz at the end of the week
Content for this week:
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FIRST IN-TERM ASSESSMENT
- Details for the test on MONDAY see here
What's covered in this week?
- Application: Root finding algorithms
- Algorithm development: bijection method for root finding
- Secant method and Newton method
Activities for this week:
- Do the in-term assessment
- Attend the Lectures on Tuesday
- Do the Coursework and attend one of the IT labs (depending on your schedule, this will be either in week 7 or 8)
Content for this week:
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What's covered in this week?
- Application: Root finding algorithms
- Speed of Convergence
- Complex Newton Iteration
- Copying composite data
- Strings
Activities for this week:
- Attend the Lectures on Tuesday and Friday
- Do the Coursework and attend one of the IT labs (depending on your schedule, this will be either in week 7 or 8)
- Do the Quiz at the end of the week
Content for this week:
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What's covered in this week?
- File input/output
- Introduction to Pandas
- Pandas showcase: atmospheric carbondioxide
- Pandas application: currency exchange rates
Activities for this week:
- Attend the Lectures on Tuesday and Friday
- Do the Coursework and attend one of the IT labs
- Do the Quiz at the end of the week
Content for this week:
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What's covered in this week?
- Statistical Plotting with Matplotlib and Seaborn
- Application: Currency exchange scatterplots
Activities for this week:
- Attend the Lectures on Tuesday (no lecture on Good Friday!)
- Do the Coursework and attend one of the IT labs
- Do the Quiz at the end of the week
Content for this week:
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What's covered in this week?
- Arrays and Matrices
- Linear Algebra with scipy.linalg
- Application: eigenvalues of large matrices
Activities for this week:
- Attend the Lectures on Tuesday and Friday
- Do the Coursework and attend one of the IT labs
- Do the Quiz at the end of the week
Content for this week:
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SECOND IN-TERM ASSESSMENT
- Details for the test om MONDAY see here
What's covered in this week?
- Python vs C - indentation and one statement per line vs using brackets and delimiters
- inline if (or ternary conditional operator), and filtering using if in list comprehensions
- unpacking and the * operator, Python function arguments *args etc
- complexity analysis of algorithms - preparation for project!
Activities for this week:
- Do the in-term assessment
- Attend the Lectures on Tuesday and Friday
- Do the Coursework and attend one of the IT labs
Content for this week:
- Lectures can be accessed here
- Notes for this week are available here
- Coursework Coursework and submission for this week are available here
- This week's lab session walkthrough: here
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Contains...
Exercise 1: Mailing Address
Exercise 2: Hello
Exercise 3: Area of a Room
Exercise 4: Area of a Field
Exercise 5: Bottle Deposits
Exercise 6: Tax and Tip
Exercise 7: Sum of the First n Positive Integers
Exercise 8: Widgets and Gizmos
Exercise 9: Compound Interest
Exercise 10: Arithmetic
Exercise 11: Fuel Efficiency
Exercise 12: Distance Between Two Points on Earth
Exercise 13: Making Change
Exercise 14: Height Units
Exercise 15: Distance Units
Exercise 16: Area and Volume
Exercise 17: Heat Capacity
Exercise 18: Volume of a Cylinder
Exercise 19: Free Fall
Exercise 20: Ideal Gas Law
Exercise 21: Area of a Triangle
Exercise 22: Area of a Triangle (Again)
Exercise 23: Area of a Regular Polygon
Exercise 24: Units of Time
Exercise 25: Units of Time (Again)
Exercise 26: Current Time
Exercise 27: Body Mass Index
Exercise 28: Wind Chill
Exercise 29: Celsius to Fahrenheit and Kelvin
Exercise 30: Units of Pressure
Exercise 31: Sum of the Digits in an Integer
Exercise 32: Sort 3 Integers
Exercise 33: Day Old Bread -
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Contains...
Exercise 34: Even or Odd?
Exercise 35: Dog Years
Exercise 36: Vowel or Consonant
Exercise 37: Name that Shape
Exercise 38: Month Name to Number of Days
Exercise 39: Sound Levels
Exercise 40: Name that Triangle
Exercise 41: Note To Frequency
Exercise 42: Frequency To Note
Exercise 43: Faces on Money
Exercise 44: Date to Holiday Name
Exercise 45: What Color is that Square?
Exercise 46: Season from Month and Day
Exercise 47: Birth Date to Astrological Sign
Exercise 48: Chinese Zodiac
Exercise 49: Richter Scale
Exercise 50: Roots of a Quadratic Function
Exercise 51: Letter Grade to Grade Points
Exercise 52: Grade Points to Letter Grade
Exercise 53: Assessing Employees
Exercise 54: Wavelengths of Visible Light
Exercise 55: Frequency to Name
Exercise 56: Cell Phone Bill
Exercise 57: Is it a Leap Year?
Exercise 58: Next Day
Exercise 59: Is a License Plate Valid?
Exercise 60: Roulette Payouts -
Contains...
Exercise 61: Average
Exercise 62: Discount Table
Exercise 63: Temperature Conversion Table
Exercise 64: No More Pennies
Exercise 65: Compute the Perimeter of a Polygon
Exercise 66: Compute a Grade Point Average
Exercise 67: Admission Price
Exercise 68: Parity Bits
Exercise 69: Approximate
Exercise 70: Caesar Cipher
Exercise 71: Square Root
Exercise 72: Is a String a Palindrome?
Exercise 73: Multiple Word Palindromes
Exercise 74: Multiplication Table
Exercise 75: Greatest Common Divisor
Exercise 76: Prime Factors
Exercise 77: Binary to Decimal
Exercise 78: Decimal to Binary
Exercise 79: Maximum Integer
Exercise 80: Coin Flip Simulation -
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Contains...
Exercise 81: Compute the Hypotenuse
Exercise 82: Taxi Fare
Exercise 83: Shipping Calculator
Exercise 84: Median of Three Values
Exercise 85: Convert an Integer to its Ordinal Number
Exercise 86: The Twelve Days of Christmas
Exercise 87: Center a String in the Terminal
Exercise 88: Is it a Valid Triangle?
Exercise 89: Capitalize It
Exercise 90: Does a String Represent an Integer?
Exercise 91: Operator Precedence
Exercise 92: Is a Number Prime?
Exercise 93: Next Prime
Exercise 94: Random Password
Exercise 95: Random License Plate
Exercise 96: Check a Password
Exercise 97: Random Good Password
Exercise 98: Hexadecimal and Decimal Digits
Exercise 99: Arbitrary Base Conversions
Exercise 100: Days in a Month
Exercise 101: Reduce a Fraction to Lowest Terms
Exercise 102: Reduce Measures
Exercise 103: Magic Dates -
Contains...
Exercise 104: Sorted Order
Exercise 105: Reverse Order
Exercise 106: Remove Outliers
Exercise 107: Avoiding Duplicates
Exercise 108: Negatives, Zeros and Positives
Exercise 109: List of Proper Divisors
Exercise 110: Perfect Numbers
Exercise 111: Only the Words
Exercise 112: Below and Above Average
Exercise 113: Formatting a List
Exercise 114: Random Lottery Numbers
Exercise 115: Pig Latin
Exercise 116: Pig Latin Improved
Exercise 117: Line of Best Fit
Exercise 118: Shuffl ing a Deck of Cards
Exercise 119: Dealing Hands of Cards
Exercise 120: Is a List already in Sorted Order?
Exercise 121: Count the Elements
Exercise 122: Tokenizing a String
Exercise 123: Infix to Postfix
Exercise 124: Evaluate Postfix
Exercise 125: Does a List contain a Sublist?
Exercise 126: Generate All Sublists of a List
Exercise 127: The Sieve of Eratosthenes -
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Download and hand in your Jupyter Notebook file. These do not contribute to your grade, but will be used to monitor your engagement with the module in accordance with the School's Student Engagement Policy.
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Download and hand in your Jupyter Notebook file. These do not contribute to your grade, but will be used to monitor your engagement with the module in accordance with the School's Student Engagement Policy.
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Download and hand in your Jupyter Notebook file. These do not contribute to your grade, but will be used to monitor your engagement with the module in accordance with the School's Student Engagement Policy.
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Download and hand in your Jupyter Notebook file. These do not contribute to your grade, but will be used to monitor your engagement with the module in accordance with the School's Student Engagement Policy.
-
Download and hand in your Jupyter Notebook file. These do not contribute to your grade, but will be used to monitor your engagement with the module in accordance with the School's Student Engagement Policy.
-
Download and hand in your Jupyter Notebook file. These do not contribute to your grade, but will be used to monitor your engagement with the module in accordance with the School's Student Engagement Policy.
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Download and hand in your Jupyter Notebook file. These do not contribute to your grade, but will be used to monitor your engagement with the module in accordance with the School's Student Engagement Policy.
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Download and hand in your Jupyter Notebook file. These do not contribute to your grade, but will be used to monitor your engagement with the module in accordance with the School's Student Engagement Policy.
-
Download and hand in your Jupyter Notebook file. These do not contribute to your grade, but will be used to monitor your engagement with the module in accordance with the School's Student Engagement Policy.
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Download and hand in your Jupyter Notebook file. These do not contribute to your grade, but will be used to monitor your engagement with the module in accordance with the School's Student Engagement Policy.
-
Download and hand in your Jupyter Notebook file. These do not contribute to your grade, but will be used to monitor your engagement with the module in accordance with the School's Student Engagement Policy.
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