University of Melbourne
June 08-12, 2015
1:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Instructors: Kerry Halupka, Isabell Kiral-Kornek
Helpers: Philippa Karoly, Daniel Glyn Hurley, Greg Bass, Parvin Zarei, Timothy Esler, Matias Maturana, Ali Almassi
Beginner's MATLAB Workshop for Researchers
Participants enrolled in this MATLAB workshop will learn how to read in, analyse, and visualise. The mission of the Software Carpentry project is to help researchers be more productive by teaching them basic computing skills. Researchers often spend much of their time wrestling with software, but most are self-taught programmers. As a result, they spend hours doing things that should take minutes, reinvent a lot of wheels, and still don't know if their results are reliable. To tackle this problem, Software Carpentry runs two-day workshops at hundreds of sites around the world. These hands-on workshops cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management, and task automation. Participants are be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.
Who: Researchers who have little or no programming experience but an understanding of how it might improve their research.
Where: Alan Gilbert Building (104 Grattan Street) - Room 121 (map).
Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop that (a) has a few specific software packages installed, and (b) is able to connect to the wifi network at the University of Melbourne (see instructions for both below). They are also required to abide by Software Carpentry's Code of Conduct.
Also, please download these four data files before arriving at the workshop:
Contact: Please mail kerry.halupka@gmail.com for more information or to volunteer as a helper!
Schedule
Day 1: Monday 8 June
| 13:00-14:30 | Introduction, user interface, variables |
| 15:00-15:30 | Coffee |
| 15:30-17:00 | Reading in and plotting data |
Day 2: Tuesday 9 June
| 13:00-14:30 | Writing scripts |
| 15:00-15:30 | Coffee |
| 15:30-17:00 | Writing scripts |
Day 3: Thursday 11 June
| 13:00-14:30 | Loops |
| 15:00-15:30 | Coffee |
| 15:30-17:00 | Loops and functions |
Day 4: Friday 12 June
| 13:00-14:30 | Functions and conditionals |
| 15:00-15:30 | Coffee |
| 15:30-17:00 | Conditionals and defensive programming |
Etherpad: http://etherpad.mozilla.org/2015-06-08-matlab.
We will use this Etherpad for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.
Syllabus
Programming in MATLAB
- Working with arrays
- Reading and plotting data
- Creating and using functions
- Loops and conditionals
- Defensive programming
- Lesson notes...
Version Control with Git
- Creating a repository
- Recording changes to files:
add,commit, ... - Viewing changes:
status,diff, ... - Working on the web:
clone,pull,push, ... - Resolving conflicts
- Reference card...
- Lesson notes...
Setup
Wifi
Prior to the workshop, University of Melbourne staff/students should ensure that their laptop can connect to UniWireless. Instructions on how to do this and where to get assistance can be found here. Attendees from other Australian universities should find out (from the IT website of their home institution) how to connect to the Eduroam wireless network.
Git
Git is a version control system that lets you track who made changes to what when and has options for easily updating a shared or public version of your code on github.com.
Windows
Git should be installed on your computer as part of your Bash install (described above).
Mac OS X
For OS X 10.8 and higher, install Git for Mac
by downloading and running
the installer.
After installing Git, there will not be anything in your /Applications folder,
as Git is a command line program.
For older versions of OS X (10.5-10.7) use the
most recent available installer for your
OS available
here. Use the Leopard installer for 10.5 and the Snow
Leopard installer for 10.6-10.7.
Linux
If Git is not already available on your machine you can try to
install it via your distro's package manager. For Debian/Ubuntu run
sudo apt-get install git and for Fedora run
sudo yum install git.
MATLAB
MATLAB is a very popular data analysis environment. It's a commercial product, however most universities provide free licences to their staff and students. University of Melbourne people can find instructions on how to install Matlab on their personal laptop here. Participants from other institutions should ask their IT department for assistance.
The instructors at the workshop will be using latest version of Matlab (2014b). Since each new version has a slightly different look and feel (not to mention new functionality that isn't available in previous versions), it's important that participants also install the latest version.
During the installation process, you'll be asked whether you'd like to install any additional toolboxes (e.g. statistics, curve fitting, aerospace... there are many). The only specialised toolbox required to complete the workshop is the parallel computing toolbox, however if there's other toolboxes that look relevant to your research you may wish to install them for future use. Note that it's not a good idea to install all the available toolboxes, as this makes the installation process take much longer (i.e. don't install a toolbox unless you are very likely to use it - you can always install additional toolboxes later on).