Fall Semester 20000
10-Dec-2000
As discussed in lecture, the Final Exam will be on Monday, 11-December, in the JFB lecture hall. You will have until the end of finals week to submit the last assignment and/or final project.
20-Nov-2000
The lab exercise on data fitting has now been updated to enable the correct calculation of linear fit uncertainties using sm. Changes affect the first problem only -- major modifications are highlighted with a purple font.
17-Nov-2000
Aaah. Apologies to you all again: another error has caused difficulties, this time with Assignment 08, Exercise 5. To run a program and have (1) standard output redirected to a file, (2) standard error [i.e., all error messages sent to the shell] redirected as well, and (3) the redirect overwrite an existing file, use
command >&! file
(The basic problem was that the transcription from
the test code to the html assignment document was not done
correctly. [To see why it is a half-tick above absolutely trivial,
compare this page with its html source code.] There are not too many
ways to screw up typing in three characters, yet somehow...)
1-Nov-2000
Please note the following changes to a07 instructions:
31-Oct-2000
If you have trouble using the "make" utility in Assignment 07, please check to be sure that you have a recent copy of the .customs.cshrc file in your home directory. (If "printenv ARCHTYPE" yields nothing (or something other than "sparc" or "rs6000" then your .customs.cshrc must be updated. The makefile ~p5720/makefiles/a07.mk depends on the environment variable "ARCHTYPE" to set the p5720 library path correctly. This scheme allows you to work on either the Suns (e.g., darkstar) or the IBM RS6000s (e.g. gp01).)
To update your .customs.cshrc file, try
cp ~p5720/examples/dot-customs.cshrc ~/.customs.cshrc
28-Oct-2000
There were some extra bits of text as well as missing text in Exercise 2 of the Lab Exercise on templates and vectors. The sample code which defines the "phys" class had two for-loops, one over "int i" and one over "string* p". The second for loop, over the string pointer, should not have been there.
The next item was a mention of the "push_forward" member function for a vector class object. Such a function does not exist for a vector. Use instead the "insert" member function.
A third item is that we should not use simple pointers to reference vector elements (e.g., "string *p" for a vector of "strings"), and so the exercise description was reworded to emphasize this point.
There was a also a problem with the line that contained the "vector::const_iterator" statment. This should read "vector<string>::const_iterator". (The "<string>" was lost because without special treatment, the angular brackets are interpreted by your browser as a TAG. Since there is no HTML tag named "string", it was simply ignored.
Finally, a semicolon was missing at the end of the declaration of the function "printa()", above main() in Exercise 4.
The new version of the html file has all these corrections highlighted in a purple font.
19-Oct-2000
In exercise 2 of Assignment 6, you are asked to use a cout << operator overload (from exercise 1) to print out the cross product of two vectors. It turns out that the choice of "^" for the cross product was not so good. (It was set up this way because the "^" looks like the "hook" operator, a generalized version of the cross product for dimensions higher than 3.) Unfortunately the "precedence" of "^" is less than that of "<<", so that in the statement
vec3d a,b;
...
cout << a ^ b << endl;
causes the compiler to group the (cout<<a) and the (b<<endl)
together and do the "<<" operation before the "^" operator is applied.
The first grouping is Ok, but the second makes no sense unless you
have happened to override the << operator for a vec3d and the
end-of-line character, "endl". Even so, you'd have to worry about the
what the "^" does to an ostream object like "cout"....
Precedence by default often works to your advantage. For example, 4+2*6 and 2*6+4 always give the same answer. The precedence of "*" is higher than "+", so the compiler knows to do the multipication before the addition, as you would expect. If you have any doubt about how operators are grouped by compiler, use parentheses:
cout << (a ^ b) << endl;
will do just what you want, print out the cross product of "a" and "b".
17-Oct-2000
Assignment A06 has been update. Significant changes have been highlighted with purple-colored font. Also an insidious typographical error in ~p5720/src/vec3d_extras.h is now gone. Finally, the due date has been changed from Sun, 22-Oct, to Mon, 23-Oct!
This assignment has alot of moving parts, so to speak, so please notify the instructor of any problems. Bring your questions to lecture tomorrow -- chances are that others have the same questions.
06-Sep-2000
Also, sysadm has provided a new, improved version of .customs.cshrc which you should copy to your home directory.
28-Aug-2000
Please see new highlighted instructions for Assignment 1 exercise 2! The bottom line is if anything goes wrong in terms of your ability to log in, you must rename or delete BOTH your .customs.cshrc AND .aliases files.
27-Aug-2000
The problem with passwords has been corrected! The passwords which you were given in class on Monday should now work.
23-Aug-2000
Welcome! Please check this page frequently for announcements regarding p3730/5720. Here you will find information about any changes in the lecture plan and assignments.
The first announcement:
PLEASE NOTE the following messages from The Administration:
1.) There is no substitute day for the Fall semester!!!!!!!
2.) With the drop date being pushed back to ten calendar days into the semester, there is no longer a period when students can withdraw from a class without incurring full tuition penalties.
Last day to drop (delete) classes: Fri., Sept. 1.
Last day to add classes: Tues., Sept. 5.
Last day to withdraw from classes: Fri., October 20
Explanations for instructors and students:
* Students can drop class by phone or web through Friday,
September 1, and the classes will not appear on their transcripts.
* Students can withdraw from classes by phone or web, but will
be held responsible for tuition, through Friday, October 20. A *W*
will appear on their transcript for these courses.