UCS Training Programme Lent Term 2010

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

This is a basic introduction to modern Fortran. At the end of the course, students should be able to write significant programs in Fortran, and to be able to start working on existing programs written in modern Fortran (i.e. in the Fortran 90/95 style). It will not cover obsolete features of Fortran, some of the more advanced aspects, or most of the extensions introduced by Fortran 2003.

The course has been rewritten in the light of experience from last year, and will include less on the concepts of programming and more on what practical Fortran programmers need to know (such as a session on Fortran I/O).

This self-paced hands-on course gives a "quick start" introduction to Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 which is widely used software for preparing presentations. Participants work at their own pace using a workbook containing notes and exercises, with a demonstrator on hand to help.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

This course is aimed at those new to programming and provides an introduction to programming using Python, focussing on scientific programming. This course is probably unsuitable for those with significant programming experience. By the end of this course, attendees should be able to write simple Python programs and to understand more complex Python programs written by others.

As this course is part of the Scientific Computing series, the examples chosen are of most relevance to scientific programming.

This course is aimed at people who are using Hermes (or other cam.ac.uk mail servers) and who want to manage and take control of their email because it is taking up too much of their time. It will cover valuable tips and techniques for managing email effectively. The practical part will be self-paced: participants can select which exercises to do using either Hermes Webmail and/or Outlook. There will also be ample opportunity to ask questions.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

This course is aimed at those new to programming and provides an introduction to programming using Python, focussing on scientific programming. This course is probably unsuitable for those with significant programming experience. By the end of this course, attendees should be able to write simple Python programs and to understand more complex Python programs written by others.

As this course is part of the Scientific Computing series, the examples chosen are of most relevance to scientific programming.

Macromedia Dreamweaver is a powerful web creation tool that allows non-technical people to produce professional websites. This course provides a practical introduction for those that wish to use Dreamweaver to create web-pages and manage websites. It focuses on building a small website.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

Matlab is a software package for numerical computation with high quality graphics facilities. This course examines Matlab's graphical capabilities in more detail than the "Matlab: Basics" course.

Stata is a powerful general purpose statistical package.

This course is for beginners and fairly new users of the package. Basic concepts and use of Stata will be introduced. The main aim of the course is to give participants a foundation and some background. However statistical techniques are not covered (see note below).

The first session looks at an overview of the Stata system and getting data into Stata format and the second looks at reporting, graphing and analyses. It is strongly recommended for anyone likely to use Stata for any but the very simplest analysis of the very simplest data.

When you write for the web you need to think differently. People dedicate very little time to reading a web page and so it is essential they see what they need and understand it with the minimum of difficulty. This short course aims to give you the skills to produce web pages that do just this.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

This course is aimed at those new to programming and provides an introduction to programming using Python, focussing on scientific programming. This course is probably unsuitable for those with significant programming experience. By the end of this course, attendees should be able to write simple Python programs and to understand more complex Python programs written by others.

As this course is part of the Scientific Computing series, the examples chosen are of most relevance to scientific programming.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

No previous experience of shell scripting is required for this course; however some knowledge of the interactive use of the bash shell is a prerequisite (see Simple Shell Scripting for Scientists: Prerequisites for details).

This course introduces shell scripting in bash for scientific computing tasks. Day one introduces very basic shell scripts in bash which process the command line in a simple fashion. Day two covers how to write more advanced shell scripts in bash. Day three covers how to make one's shell scripts more robust.

At the end of each day one or more exercises are set. It is VERY IMPORTANT that attendees attempt these exercises before the next day of the course. Attendees should make sure that they have allowed themselves sufficient study time for these exercises between each day of the course.

This is a fast paced and shortened version of the 2-session Access 2007 Introduction course and thus is more suitable for those who are quick learners. This course will be taught using Access 2007 on PCs (Windows XP) - note that this version is quite different from previous version.

This course is intended to build on the introductory EndNote course and give attenders practical experience of editing EndNote output styles.

EndNote output styles control the way EndNote sets out references and their citations in printed documents. By editing these, you can achieve precise control of the way your bibliography is set out.

LaTeX is a powerful document description language built on top of TeX. It is available on Unix, Windows and Macintoshes. It can be used for the presentation of plain text (including accented characters and letters outside the English alphabet), the typesetting of mathematics, the generation of tables, and producing simple diagrams. It is particularly suited for the writing of theses, papers and technical documents.

This is a practical-based course for people new to writing Web pages. Only the basics of HTML (hypertext markup language) will be covered, but there are other courses for those wishing to extend their knowledge. By the end of the course participants will have created three personal linked web pages.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

No previous experience of shell scripting is required for this course; however some knowledge of the interactive use of the bash shell is a prerequisite (see Simple Shell Scripting for Scientists: Prerequisites for details).

This course introduces shell scripting in bash for scientific computing tasks. Day one introduces very basic shell scripts in bash which process the command line in a simple fashion. Day two covers how to write more advanced shell scripts in bash. Day three covers how to make one's shell scripts more robust.

At the end of each day one or more exercises are set. It is VERY IMPORTANT that attendees attempt these exercises before the next day of the course. Attendees should make sure that they have allowed themselves sufficient study time for these exercises between each day of the course.

This follows on from the Introduction to HTML and is a practical-based course.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

This full-day course introduces the Python programming language to programmers who are already familiar with another high level programing language such as C/C++, Fortran, Java, Perl or Visual Basic. The aim of this course is to give such programmers sufficient familiarity with Python that they can attend any of the more advanced Python courses organised by the Computing service and easily follow any of the widely available Python tutorials on the more complex aspects of the language.

This course covers all the material contained in the "Programming: Python for Absolute Beginners" course, but in a more abbreviated fashion suitable for those who already have significant programming experience. This course does NOT cover the more complex aspects of the language (for such topics see the other Computing Service Python courses), nor is there much explicit discussion of the object oriented features of Python.

Google is unarguably the world's most used search engine - but how good is it for academic research? This session aims to demonstrate how to make best use of Google and Google scholar for research purposes, whilst outlining some of the pitfalls of over-relying on them!