MAS115: Mathematical Investigation Skills, 2017-2018

Lecturers: Dr Sam Marsh, Dr Simon Willerton, Prof Paul Blackwell

Strike action paused! The strike action which caused significant disruption to the first half of the semester has been paused to allow for a Joint Expert Panel to be convened to make an in-depth assessment of the pension fund. It is highly unlikely that strike action will resume this academic year, although nothing is certain.

You can watch a video about what's going on, or read more about the reasons for the dispute here.

This is the 2017-2018 course web page for MAS115: Mathematical Investigation Skills, which will be updated as the module progresses. For official course information, including timetabling and syllabus, please consult the list of current modules.

Course Information

MAS115 is a 20-credit, year long module. Over the year you will develop important skills needed to investigate and report on mathematical problems. These skills will be useful during your degree and beyond; such transferrable skills are very useful in the workplace and valued by employers.

A course information sheet is below.

• MAS115 course information

Sam Marsh has an office hour at 3pm on a Tuesday in G9 (no appointment necessary).
Simon Willerton has an office hour at 2pm on a Monday in J19 (no appointment necessary).

Course Materials

The course materials, by lecturer, are below.

Python (Dr Simon Willerton)

The materials for the Python lectures and labs from Semester 1 are below.

Presentation (Dr Marsh)

The materials for the lectures and labs on presentation from Semester 1 are below.

R programming (Prof Blackwell)

The materials for the lectures and labs on R from Semester 2 are below.

Projects

Mini-projects

The Semester 1 mini-project was released in Week 6 of Semester 1. (You may be asked to log-in with your standard university unsername and password.)

• Semester 1 mini-project
• Semester 2 mini-project

Group Projects

The first group project was released in Week 12 of Semester 1. (You may be asked to log-in with your standard university unsername and password.)

• Group project 1 (Configurations on Chessboards)
• Group project 2 (Branching Processes)

You must participate in both group projects in order to pass the module.

Below is guidance on uploading zip files to the upload system.

• Uploading guidance for website projects
• Uploading guidance for presentations

Upload system

The project upload system can be found at the link below. You should use your standard university username, and you will have been emailed a password. If you are trying to connect from a computer not on the University's network (that is, not using a University PC or University Wifi), then you will need to set up a VPN connection. (If you have trouble establishing a VPN connection, see this advice)

• MAS115 upload system

Group Project Submissions

You can view the submissions for group projects at the link below.

• Group project submissions

Discussion Board

There is a discussion board for MAS115. This is a forum for MAS115 students to use to ask and answer (anonmously, if preferred) questions on the material for the course. Your lecturers will look at it too and be notified of new posts. The board lies in MOLE, so log-in with your usual username and password when asked.

• MAS115 discussion board

Extras

General materials

• The Intro Week computer session handout.
• The code.org website, an excellent resource for furthering programming skills. (show video)

Python materials

• Download and install Python at home for free with Anaconda.
  Make sure you install Python 3.6.
• A Python script: higher_lower.py.
• Think Python, an introduction to Python programming for beginners, available free online.

LaTeX

• Download and install MiKTeX for Windows at home for free: MiKTeX.org.
• Download and install MacTeX for Macs at home for free: tug.org/mactex. (show instructions)
  

  I think this is the appropriate thing top download on Macs, and hopefully the instructions are straightforward, but, as I haven't got a Mac, I am unable to test. Please post any problems or advice on the discussion board as it will help others.

• Problems installing MiKTeX on Windows 7, 8 or 10? (show tips)
  

  If you've been getting an error after installing MiKTeX on a Windows 7, 8 or 10 machine, try the following.

  1. Ensure TeXworks is closed.
  2. Download TeXmaker.
  3. Open any .tex file that you know works (or make a very basic one).
  4. Process it by pressing the blue arrow next to 'Quick build'.
  5. Hopefully, the file will be processed OK. Change something in the document and re-run to make sure it's working.
  6. You can either now use TeXmaker as your standard text editor, or try TeXworks again... you may find the latter now works too!

  If you continue to have problems, please post on the discussion board.

• Download and install TeXmaker for free.
• Download and install Geogebra for free.
• LaTeX templates:
  • a basic LaTeX preamble for documents
  • a Beamer preamble (used to create my lecture slides)
• Get rid of extra space when including Geogebra PDFs. (show instructions)
  

  When exporting PDF images from Geogebra, sometimes the software creates extra white space above and below the image. If you open the PDF file you will see that what's happened is the image has been put in the middle of an A4 page; including this PDF in a LaTeX document will unwanted blank space at the top and bottom.

  The way I've fixed this issue is to specify a bounding box to crop the image. To do this, simply change the \includegraphics{...} command to \includegraphics[bb=0 180 575 625]{...} That's worked for me, but you may find you need to change the numbers. The first two correspond to $x$ and $y$-coordinates for the lower-left corner of the bounding box, and the second two correspond to uper-right corner.

• Learn more about about LaTeX:
  • The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX
  • the LaTeX Wikibook
  • the Beamer manual
  • the PGFplots website

HTML and web-design

• This page's CSS file.
• The w3schools page on navigation bars, as recommended in the Week 9 lab.
• The HTML Dog HTML and CSS tutorials, as recommended in the Week 9 lab.
• The Barelyfitz tutorial on CSS positioning, as recommended in the Week 9 lab.
• The script for enabling Mathjax in HTML pages, to do things like $\Gamma(x)quiv \lim_{x\to 0}\prod_{v=0}^{n-1}\frac{n!\;n^{x-1}}{x+v}$. (show code)
  

  Copy and paste the code below into the head of your HTML document.

  
  <script type="text/x-mathjax-config">
    MathJax.Hub.Config({tex2jax: {inlineMath: [['$','$']]}});
  </script>
  
  <script type="text/javascript" async
    src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mathjax/2.7.1/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS-MML_HTMLorMML">
  </script>
  
  

• Read about the Windows Command Prompt.
• Convert computer code to safe HTML.
• The script for enabling Google Prettyprint in HTML pages. (show code)
  

  Copy and paste the below just above the pre and code tags.

  
  <script src="https://cdn.rawgit.com/google/code-prettify/master/loader/run_prettify.js"></script>
  
  

  Change the pre tag to

  
  <pre class="prettyprint linenums">
  
  

  and click refresh.

• Learn about PHP: How to do Everything with PHP and MySQL

R extras

• Guide to the RStudio interface

Last updated: 1 January 1970