FYS3140/4150 info for week 34

Dear all,
first of all welcome to a new semester and thanks for having chosen FYS3150/4150. We hope you will enjoy the course.
We will at least try to make our best in order that you'll be pleased.

This is the first of a series of weekly updates  about the course.
The most important thing this week is the first lab session.

We have not yet made up the final lab groups since everybody should be able to get his/her first wishes.
The lab sessions are Thursdays 10am-2pm and 2pm-6pm and Fridays 10am-2pm and 2pm-6pm. The last hour, 6pm-7pm,
is open to everybody.
Every session can seat 15 people in front of the permanent computers, but we can seat more people if you come with your own laptop.
There are additional electricity sockets at every table.

This week, at the beginning of every lab session (the first 20-25 minutes), Haavard and Morten (they are the lab teachers) will give a brief
get started introduction to QTcreator and GIT. We plan to use Devilry to hand in the projects (that is only the report plus the feedback will be there) but have GIT as the repository for the source code. If you plan to use QTcreator, please show up at the beginning at your lab session.

Else, I recommend also that you load down the programs on the web site and start to look at exercises 2.1 and 2.2 in the text book this week.
The quicker you get acquainted with C++ programming the better. Alternatively, you can click on the links in the lecture notes (the pdf file) and go directly to the different programs discussed in the text.

This week we covered some basic aspects of C++ programming and discussed the algorithm for converting decimal numbers into a binary basis.
I did not get time to discuss the algorithms for computing the exponential function. These algorithms contain more C++ details. Please take a look at thsoe codes as well in chapter 2 and the slides. You are however free to program in Python as well. A useful strategy in the beginning is to
actually write the program first in python and then translate to C++.

Next week I will discuss numerical derivation and pointers and call by reference/value (and other C++ technicalities) on Monday and then start the discussion of project 1 on Tuesday with an introduction to linear algebra and matrix handling. I will present project 1 on Tuesday.

Best wishes for this fall semester from the three of us,
Haavard and Morten*Morten