202425_40771_MATH1013
24/25(3) MATH1013 Computational Mathematics and Modelling (40771)
MATH1013 - Welcome to the module
Dear Computational Mathematicians,
Welcome to MATH1013! Teaching for this module begins on Tuesday 1st Oct with an online lecture at 10am. You should find that meeting in your online calendar, or you can find the link under "Online Lectures" on Minerva. Apart from attending that lecture, the next steps are:
(a) Get access to Python (details below)
(b) Attend your first weekly computational workshop, in-person, in week 1. This should be on your timetable, and will be a two hour slot in one of the University computer clusters. (Note that for some of you this is soon after the lecture.)
(c) Make sure you can access both the Minerva page (where the first set of lecture notes are already available) and the module's Teams page. We will answer most queries in one of those two places, so please look carefully on both before asking us anything!
Getting Python
In MATH2920 we will learn and use the programming language Python to solve mathematical problems. More specifically, we will be using Python 3.x for some x (the value of x does not matter much, but it must not be Python 2.x). To use Python, we need a graphical user interface (GUI). The one we recommend is Spyder, which comes as part of the large free software package Anaconda.
On University cluster machines, you can access Spyder via Apps Anywhere, which you should see on the desktop. If not go to https://appsanywhere.leeds.ac.uk/ and log in with your university email address ([email protected]). For more details on using the AppsAnywhere service look here: https://it.leeds.ac.uk/it?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0014759. You should find a long list of applications including "Spyder". Make sure when you open it, it says Python 3.x (for some x) at the top.
If you have your own machine, you may want to access Python on that too. There are different ways to do this, we recommend option (1):
(1) Download and install the Python installation from Anaconda. It is free, available on Windows, Mac and Linux, and can be downloaded from: https://www.anaconda.com/products/individual
(2) Use the AppsAnywhere service, as above.
(3) If (and only if) you cannot do (1) or (2) another option is to sign up for a (free) account at https://www.cocalc.com. This offers the same Python language as Anaconda, although with a different looking interface (not Spyder). Cocalc allows you to write and run Python code entirely in a web browser.