You are strongly encouraged to form small teams to collaborate in preparing the solutions to the MATLAB problems from SCHOL. No team may contain more than three members. Teams may contain two members. Teams may vary during the semester; that is, if you wish to change the composition of any team, you may do so at any time--of course, while maintaining the limit of three. No other collaboration is permitted. If individuals or teams collaborate without acknowledgement, penalties will be assessed.
You may submit your solutions in one of two ways: (i) the team works together and submits one Diary file or M-Book with all team members listed on the front; or (ii) each team member submits his own write-up, but collaboration is acknowledged by listing the other team members on the front. I prefer the former, since it makes grading more efficient and reveals the teams more clearly. However, if the individualist inside you demands your own version, that is permissible.
You may form your teams as you wish. If you are a loner, or don't know anyone in class, I will be willing to assign students to teams. Experience has shown that students who work in teams: adjust to MATLAB's syntax quicker, spend less time in seemingly hopeless dead-ends, learn more, and actually get higher grades. Participation on a team is not mandatory--but it is strongly suggested. If I see that the lack of collaboration is impeding your progress, I will make the formation of teams mandatory.
NOTE: This policy commences with Problem Set B. Everyone is expected to do Problem Set A on their own.
NOTE: Team homework should be a true collaborative
effort. Experience shows that if one individual does all the work,
then what the other members of the team miss invariably shows up (more
precisely fails to show up) on succeeding exams.
Software Versions
The versions of software that are available on campus are MATLAB 4.2 and MATLAB 5.0, 5.1 or 5.2. In order to work the problems in SCHOL we expect you to use one of the flavors of version 5. You should find that version on most PCs and UNIX machines in the WAM and GLUE Labs. However, you may encounter version 4.2 in some places. For example, it may still exist on some of the Macs. Many of the problems can be solved using version 4.2, but we prefer that you try to gain access to version 5.
The versions that are available in the WAM Labs are the ``professional'' version of the software. There is also a ``student'' version, that is readily available at a fairly nominal cost, e.g. in the University Bookstore. Computationally, the student version will suffice for this course. However, the M-Book feature (see below)does not work satisfactorily on the student version.
You will use MATLAB to solve mathematical problems involving ordinary differential equations in this course. There still remains the issue of how you transmit those solutions to others, in particular in what form to hand them in for grading. The default method in MATLAB is to use a combination of M-files and diary files. M-files are a sequence of commands and explanatory comment lines, in effect a short program, which when executed, that is evaluated by MATLAB, results in output that displays your answers in the form of mathematical formulas and graphs. If you wrap your program, that is your M-file, inside a diary command, then the output is placed in a file that is suitable for printing. Both M-files and diary files are plain text files that can be managed by any common text editor. This formatting process is described in considerable detail in SCHOL.
An alternate method of formatting your MATLAB solutions is via a
so-called M-Book. It is possible to run Microsoft Word as a front
end for MATLAB. For those
of you who are familiar with the mathematical software systems
Mathematica or Maple, the result resembles a Mathematica Notebook or a
Maple Worksheet. In particular, the mathematical input and output, the
formulas and the graphs are integrated and formatted
nicely. Experience has shown that this interface works best with
Word97 and Matlab 5.2, and only with the Professional version of
MATLAB. For those of you with access to those applications, the use of
M-Books is strongly encouraged. The easiest method to start the
process is to type "notebook" at the MATLAB prompt. When Word97
launches you will see an additional item "Notebook" on its menu
bar. It contains virtually all the additional features you need to
employ the M-Book interface successfully.
The Mathematics Department has assigned teaching assistants to assist
Math 246 students with software issues. Tutoring will take place in
the WAM Lab in PG2.
Click here for the schedule.
The Math OWL Lab in room 0203 in the Math building is open Mon-Fri,
8AM-4PM. The official list of WAM and other OWL locations and hours is
maintained on INFORM. It is located at
http://www.inform.umd.edu/CompRes/Docs/.where2go/where2go.2.html
Matlab Tutoring
Computer Lab Locations and Hours