All-provider course timetable

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

It is common for a student or researcher to find a piece of software or to have one thrust upon them by a supervisor which they must then build, install and use. It is a myth that any of this requires system privilege. This course demonstrates the building, installation and use of typical software ranging from trivially easy examples (the "configure, make, install" scheme) through to the evils of badly written Makefiles. Common errors and what they mean will be covered and by the end of the course the student should be able to manage their own software without needing to pester their system administrator.

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 hands-on course is a follow up from the Excel 2007 Basics course for support staff. The course will provide you with greater confidence using a wider range of formula, filtering data and creating charts.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

This course will introduce more advanced aspects of the Python language than the "Python for Absolute Beginners" course or "Python for Programmers" courses. The course will cover topics such as file I/O in more detail than either of those two courses. Whilst the course will not cover the use of Python to produce graphical output, some mention will be made of how Python can be used to interface with tools such as gnuplot to produce graphical output of scientific data.

This course does not explicitly cover the object oriented aspects of the Python language.

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.

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.

A course in basic C programming intended for beginners to programming only. The aim of the course is to get everyone to the stage of being able to write small utility programs in C for carrying out simple calculations and data manipulation.

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.

A course in basic C programming intended for beginners to programming only. The aim of the course is to get everyone to the stage of being able to write small utility programs in C for carrying out simple calculations and data manipulation.

This follow-up practical gives those who have attended the LaTeX Introduction an opportunity to do exercises under supervision.

InDesign is a desktop publishing package available for both Macs and PCs which is used to build up a publication from ready-prepared text, images and graphics in the same way as QuarkXpress and PageMaker. Participants use pre-written text and scanned-in pictures to assemble and produce a double-sided, two-column newsletter using InDesign.

SPSS is a powerful general purpose statistical package with high quality graphics and tabulation facilities, and a reputation for being relatively user-friendly. This session follows on from Part 1 and covers useful techniques and tricks. It is strongly recommended for anyone likely to use SPSS for any but the very simplest analysis of the very simplest data.

The rendering time for web pages is dominated by the graphics on the page. This course teaches methods of preparing graphics so minimise information loss and maximise transfer and rendering efficiency. There is an opportuinity to try the methods using PhotoShop.

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.