Lab 1: Tuesday April 1, 2014

Brief overview of the class structure

See:

• Class Format
• Computing Options [2014 version]
• Canvas page
• honor code

Things to try in groups:

Please work together in groups of 2 or 3.

• Log on to SageMathCloud. See Using SageMathCloud.

• Create a new project and share it with your group members.

• Open a terminal window. If people in your group aren’t comfortable with Unix, try out commands like ls, pwd, mkdir, mv, cp, etc. See Unix, Linux, and OS X.

• Create and edit a new file named hello.py by typing:

  $ open hello.py
  

  at the terminal prompt $.

• Add one line to this file and then click Save:

  print "Hello World!"
  

• In the terminal window, type:

  $ python hello.py
  

  In should print out Hello World!

• Edit the file to add the lines:

  import matplotlib        # python plotting package
  matplotlib.use("Agg")    # so plot commands work in this script
  from pylab import *      # imports lots of things like linspace, sin, plot
  
  x = linspace(0,1,1001)
  y = sin(10 * pi * x**2)
  plot(x,y)
  
  fname = "myplot.png"
  savefig(fname)
  print "Saved ",fname
  

• Save the file and rerun it at the terminal prompt, then view the file:

  $ python hello.py
  $ open myplot.png
  

• Open an IPython Notebook from the New menu.

• Follow the instructions for “making a plot in IPython” from the page Using SageMathCloud.