Introduction week

First meeting

After this meeting students should:

  • Know me a bit

  • Understand how and why programming can be used to study mathematics.

  • Know where all class resources are

  • As a class agree on a schedule for office hours

  • Know what they need to do to prepare for their first class

Introduce myself

Use this slide deck: main

  • Pick 4 or 5 pictures of my family and I to introduce myself.

  • Mathematician (where/what I studied)

  • Trustee of the UK Python association https://uk.python.org

  • Conference and workshop organiser

  • Editor for JOSS

  • Fellow of the sustainable software institute

  • Maintainer of a number of open source scientific research packages

Programming

  1. Class exercise: get a class word cloud association for the word “programming”. (Using mentimeter.com).

  2. Class exercise: how to make a cup of tea in 3 steps (using menti)

  3. Class exercises: get a class word cloud association “What are uses for programming in Mathematics?”

    • Proving theorems;

    • Obtaining conjectures;

    • Implementing tools.

Location of class resources

Office hours

As a class identify office hours.

Potential times are:

Tuesday: 1000-1200 Friday: 1100-1300 or Friday: 1300-1500

How the class works

Direct students at my teaching philosophy page: <https://vknight.org/tch-phi/>

Discuss the philosophy of the main text, specifically discussing this <https://vknight.org/pfm/overview/introduction/main.html#fig-knowledge-vs-technique>

Discuss structure of the book.

  • Timetable:

    • Discuss the actual timetable.

    Discuss this diagram: Week structure

    Discuss this diagram: Understanding

  • Assessment.

  • For first lab session: work through chapter 1. Give a brief demo.

After class email

Send the following email after class:

Hi all,

A recording of today's class is available at <>.

In this class we discussed multiple things about the class itself:

- Course documents available here: https://vknight.org/cfm/
- We agreed that office hours will be: <>
- You can find my teaching philosophy here: https://vknight.org/tch-phi/

The goal of this week is to make sure you are able to install the software
necessary. Follow the instruction in this chapter of the course text:
https://vknight.org/pfm/tools-for-mathematics/01-using-notebooks/introduction/main.html

If you are unable to follow through the tutorial and/or the exercises please
come by the optional drop in session on Wednesday.

Please get in touch if I can assist with anything,
Vince

Second meeting

  • Give brief review of the contents of the chapter. Do this by working through the tutorial and the how to section of the relevant chapter of the class.

  • Ask if anyone has any questions/comments/feedback.

  • Remind everyone about the resources available to them (videos both on youtube and LC, chapters, plan, discord etc…).

  • Explain that the following things seemed to be the main ones to come up:

    1. Finding files on computer.

    2. Difference between markdown and code cell.

    3. Using brackets when doing computations.

  • Work through the exercises and solutions.

For each of those do a small walk-through showing the concepts again.