Homework 0

This assignment will be graded as check (complete) or check-minus (incomplete). I’ll post instructions for submitting the MATLAB program on moodle.

Get familiar with the class (by Tuesday 9/9)

Please complete the following by next lecture:

1. Do the math self-assessment. (Solutions are here.)

2. Read the course policies.

3. Post on Piazza. Tell everyone something about yourself and share any feedback or questions you have about the class.

4. Fill out this short anonymous survey to provide some data for the upcoming lectures.

Get started with MATLAB (by Friday 9/12)

Moodle submission link

The purpose of this exercise is to start getting familiar with MATLAB, get some practice learning a new language on your own, and begin to using course resources to collaborate with your classmates. Please complete this before fourth hour on Friday 9/12.

• Spend an hour or two with one or more of the MATLAB resources on the course page.

• Write a program that creates two 100 x 100 matrices, then adds them together in two different ways: first by using a double for loop, and then by using the ‘+’ operator. Time how long each method takes to add the matrices by using the ‘tic’ and ‘toc’ operations.

• (Optional) Time each method 1000 times and record the timing results in a vector of length 1000. For each method:
  • Print the average and standard deviation of the running time
  • Plot a histogram of the running times

Please consider this a collaborative exercise to be solved with your classmates. Post to Piazza early and often. We want to hear from you!

• Which MATLAB resource is the most helpful?
• Did you find any other resources that you like?
• How do you start MATLAB on the lab machines?
• How do you create a new program?
• How do you execute a program?
• How do you find help about functions like ‘tic’ and ‘toc’?
• Is anything unclear about the question? What is your interpretation?

I will monitor the discussion as well. The only thing I ask is that you do not post your solution.