Better Informatics - Files

General handbook Edit on GitHub

don’t stress yourself out too much, first year doesn’t count towards your degree

• LaundryView
• Common Outside Course Options for Informatics Students
• Year 1 Google Drive
• mailing list archives - ug1-students
• if you have a learning disability go to the disability service! make sure you go there long before the exams, it only takes few hours and can help you quite a bit.
• Programming Club
• InfBase: a drop in helpdesk for you to get additional tutoring and support with your courses. See the schedule here - there’s no need to sign up, just drop in

General guide, mailing list archives Edit on GitHub

• Honours hurdles: refer to your DRPS programme
• InfBase: a drop in helpdesk for you to get additional tutoring and support with your courses. See the schedule here - there’s no need to sign up, just drop in

General Edit on GitHub

• Year 5 Google Drive
• mailing list archives - msc-students
• Useful YouTube channel for MLPR / PMR / IT / IAML / DME

General Edit on GitHub

• Year 3 Google Drive
• mailing list archives - ug3-students
• Useful YouTube channel for MLPR / PMR / IT / IAML / DME
• Simon’s Past Paper Solution Collection
• Dump DPMT projects to Trello

General Edit on GitHub

• Facebook Group Chat
• Year 4 Google Drive
• mailing list archives - ug4-students
• Useful YouTube channel for MLPR / PMR / IT / IAML / DME

Honours Project Edit on GitHub

• You can manage citations with JabRef or Zotero
• Use DBLP to generate .bib citations over Google Scholar
• Write your Intro, Conclusion and Abstract last — your project might change by the time you’ve written everything else.
  • Abstract: The advertisement for your paper. You want to start with a very general scope and narrow down to specifics very quickly. Don’t use jargon. Do flex your results.
  • Introduction: Similar in that you want to be general, but you have more space. You need to talk about the Motivation, Objective, Contribution and Organisation.
  • Conclusion: An overview of the project and your results. You’ll want to have “Critical evaluation of own work” in here and also discuss how the project has helped you (the latter isn’t in the marking scheme however was advised to include this).
• Ask your supervisor if you can use “I” and what tense to use. My supervisor banned “I” and mandated past tense, YMMV. You probably want to avoid 2nd person (you) and use “one” instead.
• Find some linter or other tool to check the LaTeX you have written before submission. There are a bunch of small things you can do to make things render nicely: for example, ``quote’’ instead of “quote”, --- instead of —, etc.
• You can use \autoref{chapter-introduction} which will expand to Chapter \ref{chapter-introduction}
• If you are writing a MInf2 thesis, refer to the first part as “Part One”
• Outstanding undergraduate projects - Recent dissertations which have scored 80% and above.
• A Template-based Model for Automatic Image Description (2014), feedback, with Mirella Lapata (83%)
• WILDEBEAST: A webservice for real time characterisation of infectious disease epidemics, supervised by Andrew Rambaut (80%)

Binding

You do not need to get your thesis bound for submission. However you may want a nice printed copy of your thesis as a record of your hard work or it makes a nice gift for your parents. The University Printing Services will hardback bind your thesis with gold foil lettering on the spine for £19 + 0.05(# b&w pages) + 0.4(# colour pages).

Formatting your thesis for binding:

• If you want two sided printing, add twoside to your options
• The default top margin is 2cm and the bottom is 4cm, I think it looks nicer with \geometry{a4paper,left=4cm,top=2.5cm,right=2.5cm,bottom=3cm,twoside} which is set in infthesis.cls
• Use a linter like https://www.dainiak.com/latexcheck/ to make sure you’re doing LaTeX good

If you have done a two-part MInf, it is preferable to have both parts of your MInf in the same book. The best way to do this is to duplicate one of your parts and copy the Introduction to your Conclusion of the other one into it. You will most likely need to fix a bunch of errors with bibliography entries needing to be copied over or adding \usepackage statements. Then you can add \part{Title of Part 1} and \part{Title of Part 2} before each respective part so that the table of contents is formatted properly. You will then need to think of a new title for the project as a whole for the \title{} and merge the abstracts and acknowledgement sections.

• For two-part MInf, override the submityear with the years that you did the project in infthesis.cls like so \gdef\@submityear{2020 -- 2022}

INF2D - Reasoning and Agents | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

50% closed book exam, 30% across two courseworks, 20% tutorial / engagement. Pass: 40% overall

• MCQ Question Cache
• Quizlet
• Python implementation of algorithms from Russell And Norvig’s “Artificial Intelligence - A Modern Approach”
• Alpha-Beta pruning interactive example
• Another AB pruning example - allowing you to create your own tree
• Video on a-B pruning
• Good set of video lectures on most things covered in the course
• Breadth first search & depth first search
• PDDL Reference
  • PDDL Domains
  • PDDL Problems
• Bora M. Alper’s PDDL Companion - syntax check and plan PDDL from your terminal
• Bora M. Alper’s Lecture Notes (2019)

Useful Links Edit on GitHub

• Give feedback about Better Informatics in #sigweb on the CompSoc Discord
• Admin
  • Instant login: euclid, learn
  • ITO contact form, Rep Meetings blog
  • Courses: Full list of Informatics courses, Course survey reports
  • Timetables: Semester, coursework planner / timeline, Collaborative deadline spreadsheet
  • Policies: feedback, coursework, progression guidance
  • Allocations: tutorials, labs
• Software & Tools
  • Spotify on DICE
  • Coursework Calculator
  • The Marauders App - map of machines
  • Web printing interfaces: EveryonePrint, ManagePrint
  • Exporting Outlook calendar to Webcal / Google calendar
  • Batch Downloading Media Hopper Replay lecture recordings, + same script packaged as a PIP package
• Facebook
  • School of Informatics - for school wide discussion
  • CompSoc Members - for Informatics related events
  • CompSoc Careers - for job offers, internships, and placements.
  • Class of 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021
• Other
  • Course Rankings (this is out of date, contains data from 2015/2016. also the graphs take minutes to load.)

ADBS | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

• Official past exams and solutions by Samuel G. (up to 2010)
• ADBS-2013-solutions
• ADBS-2012-solutions
• ADBS-2011-solutions

ADS - Algorithms and Data Structures | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

• See shared drive for some unofficial solutions.
• An unofficial set of programming assignments based on the ADS material - website
• Sorting algorithms 1 - interactive
• Sorting algorithms 2 - website
• Counting sort - interactive
• A video clearly demonstrating the Counting Sort (as it’s not in the above link, and Mary’s notes don’t make it easy) - video
• Prim’s Algorithm - interactive
• Kruskal’s Algorithm - interactive
• Longest Common Subsequence - animation
• Network Flow - interactive
• Graham’s Scan - interactive
• Dynamic Programming - Tushar Roy explains a few examples really well on YouTube

AFDS Edit on GitHub

• The Singular Value Decomposition (SVD)

AGTA | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

• 2005

AR - Automated Reasoning Edit on GitHub

• 2010 solutions on Drive
• May 2012,

AV Edit on GitHub

• May 2010 Answers
• May 2011 Solutions (in progress)
• May 2012 Solutions (in progress)
• May 2013 Solutions (in progress)
• May 2014 Solutions (in progress)
• All 2014 Slides in one pdf (in roughly the right order)
• Short Question Answers

BIO2 Edit on GitHub

2014

CARD - Computer Architecture and Design | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

• Past papers and solutions (see ‘unorganised’ folder)
• Stan’s summary - link
• All lecture slides in one pdf

CAV Edit on GitHub

• May 2014
• May 2013
• May 2012
• May 2011
• May 2010

CCS - Computational Cognitive Science | drps, info Edit on GitHub

• Bits And Bobs

CG - Computer Graphics | drps, info Edit on GitHub

• Build a ray tracer from scratch (scratchapixel.com)

CN Edit on GitHub

• Notes
• May 2012
• May 2011
• May 2010
• May 2009

COMN - Computer Communications and Networks | drps, info, papers Edit on GitHub

• See shared drive for some unofficial solutions.
• Textbook in shared drive here
• Video explaining CRC calculation - link
• Wiki explaining CRC calculation - link
• Revision notes by Ben Shaw
• https://web.archive.org/web/20081209125106/http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~courses/cn8800/solutions/Ch7.pdf

COPT Edit on GitHub

• 2014 exam
• 2012 exam
• 2011 exam
• Stan’s scanned notes. And some revision notes (mostly the lectures slides in word form).
• Outline of lecture slides (topics)
• Denali. OSE. Learning to schedule. LRPD.

CS - Computer Security Edit on GitHub

• August 2010 answers
• May 2010 answers
• This explains BLP and AB much better than the slides: i93lbacm(org).pdf
• Some really great explanations of concepts in the course (Crypto, PK, RSA, Diffie-Hellman): http://www.youtube.com/user/ArtOfTheProblem
• Revision notes by Ben Shaw
• Running 2nd CW locally (on Ubuntu):
  • Copy folder /afs/inf.ed.ac.uk/group/teaching/compsec/cw2/
  • Follow instruction at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/Installation
  • Modify your qemu.env, the location to QEMU should be something like /usr/bin/kvm
  • Install vinagre: sudo apt install vinagre
• Iptables essentials
• Wireshark:
  • The “Packet List” pane in Wireshark (see Table 3.15. for what the lines on the side mean)
  • Convert IP addresses into hostnames (Edit - Preferences - Name Resolution)
• FTP:
  • A walkthrough through FTP passive mode, by manually reading every single packet
  • List of raw FTP commands
  • Difference between FTP active and passive mode
    • tip: read it carefully, not just the bullet points. the picture is useful too.
    • tip: for some reason, in active mode, the source data port is not 20 (in the coursework)
  • How to test FTP active mode:
    1. Run ftp alice
    2. Type alice as username, press enter, type alice as password.
    3. Type get meow.jpg
    4. meow.jpg should be downloaded & it should say “please consider using passive mode”
• Software Security
  • return-to-libc.pdf
  • Return-to-libc tutorial
  • buffer overflow attacks (computerphile)

CT - Compiling Techniques piazza | drps, info Edit on GitHub

• GitLab
• Understanding the Stack
• Your compiler is allowed to take up to ten seconds to finish.
• Wikipedia: Operator-precedence parser
• Grammar stuff:
  • C grammar, C Lex spec
  • Eliminate left recursion
• MIPS (lots of useful links here!)

Calculus and its Applications drps Edit on GitHub

• Fox’s notes (src)
• Cheat sheet PDFs of the definitions and theorems to save you time in the exam (no need to search through the textbook)
• SympyGamma - a tool similar to WolframAlpha, but also offering explanation for derivations.
• Answers for Essential calculus
• Riemann sums online calculator
• Lots of formulae
• Amazing mindmap
• Tests of Convergence: cheat sheet, flow chart
• Not All Things CAP - better cap cheat sheet

Cognitive Science | drps, info Edit on GitHub

• Book about neural networks - recommended by the lecturer
• 3Blue1Brown - really clear videos explaining neural networks and backprop
• Visualising Clustering - video from Google
• Deduction vs Induction
• Word learning models - concept map with key ideas
• Amazing flash cards - key definitions
• Full course notes and posters - 2018

Priority reading list

All of the readings are examinable, but if you want to prioritise, here is the recommended order:

• Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 and 7 of Pinker’s “Words and Rules”, minus places where there’s no relevance to lecture content
• Chapter 4 of Harley’s “Psychology of Language”
• Any academic paper covering something you’re not sure you fully understand. For example, if you’re not 100% clear on perceptrons, have a look at the Gurney reading

DAPA Edit on GitHub

The course textbook (“Introduction to Parallel Computing”) is available online on Safari, for free. You have to log in with your university credentials.

• 2013
• 2012
• 2012(2)
• 2011
• 2010
• 2009

DME Edit on GitHub

The discussion of papers on http://nb.mit.edu

2015 Paper Discussions Here

DS Edit on GitHub

May 2014, May 2013, May 2012 April 2011

Aggregated solutions to questions from 2009-2012 combined here

We’ve started some notes on the course content, they can be found here.

Tree mapping to the slides here.

Discrete Math and Probability drps, drive | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

DMMR and PwA has been merged to form this new course, DMP is now solely based on coursework but you can find information about past papers here.

Online (flipped-classroom) version of this course. 10x better than the lectures.

Exam type: 100% Coursework.

Discrete Mathematics:

• Some inf1-cl links may be useful.
• Companion website for textbook
• List of topics per exam
• Trev tutor on DMMR and part 2 - similar to Khan academy
• Course notes by Edwin Onuonga (2017-18)
• Strategic Summary Notes by Maksymilian Mozolewski (2019-20)
• NotAllThingsDMP_full and NotAllThingsDMP_block2_each_week, a summary notes of DMP 2021 by Shuyuan Zhang (2021-2022)
• Videos
  • Surjective and Injective functions
  • Proof by Induction
  • Strong Induction
  • RSA Encryption Example - two parts: computing an example, generating the keys
  • Introduction to Combinations, Introduction to Permutations
  • Permutations: accounting for repetitions
  • Relations and the different kinds of relations… and equivalence relations. This guy is great, isn’t he?
• Proofs:
  • Worksheet: Proofs involving functions - with sample proof + proving injectivity/surjectivity
  • by Induction: solutions to an MEI question (todo)
• 2016 worksheet page
• Congrugence modulo (Khan Academy)
• Order of Complexity [Not examinable 2018]
• A great tutorial on Baye’s theorem — read from Anatomy of a Test
• The order of mixed quantifiers - Is it equivalent if you swap ∀s and ∃s?

Probablity

• better tutorial/assignment list with some assignment solutions CORRECTED
• super handy expectations sheet
• Summary from the course textbook - The last four pages before the index in the Ninth Edition
• Slader Textbook Solutions - 9th Edition
• Cheat Sheet (source)
• Another cheat sheet with guides on distributions
• Joint probability distributions
• Conditional Probability Visualisation
• A visual introduction to probability and statistics (Seeing Theory)
• Coin Problem - 3 heads occurring before 2 tails (continuous toss)
• Course Summary
• 2017-2018 notes by Edwin Onuonga
  • Discrete probability: Missing combinatorics section. (html, pdf)
  • Continuous probability: Missing continuous markov chains, poisson processes, birth-death processes etc. (html, pdf)
• Videos
  • Binomial probability (Khan Academy)
  • Intro to Poisson distribution (jbstatistics)
  • Intro to probability (followed by conditional probability) - playlist (Trefor Bazett) - this video to end of playlist
  • Bayes Theorem (Michel van Biezen)
  • Calculus: Iterated integrals (KristaKingMath)
• Calculators
  • Individual and cumulative binomial probabilities

E-learning Edit on GitHub

• Reading List
• Linear Algebra by Prof. Gilbert Strang - MIT 18.06
• Russel and Norvig’s online AI Class from Stanford - https://www.ai-class.com/
• MIT OpenCourseware Mathematics - http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/
• Accessible videos about cryptography - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB4D701646DAF0817

EPL - Elements of Programming Languages | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

Unofficial past paper solutions can be found in the EPL folder in the Team Drive.

EXC - Extreme Computing | drps, info, papers Edit on GitHub

• All Lecture Slides in one PDF (2012/2013), (2014/2015)
• Exam/Solutions
  • May ‘16 & ‘17,
  • may 2013,
  • may 2012,
  • april 2011
• Good page on trap and emulate » Cached Copy with Comments Enabled
• Approximate Frequency Counts over Data Streams: paper, slides
• Revision notes - Started by Stefan Adamov
• Revision Notes - Mark Nemec on Github
• Docker + Pig setup, this allows to easily execute examples from Tutorials point

• 2021 Revision Notes

• Additional Resources:
  • MIT’s Distributed Systems Course - Has good notes & labs on GFS, MapReduce, etc.

Exam Related Edit on GitHub

• Exam papers: via the ITO, via the library – (past papers)
• Exam statistics
• Exam timetable from the registry
• Special arrangements exams timetable
• Minimum exam score to pass, more advanced calculator

FNLP - Foundations of Natural Language Processing | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

• (2019-20) Bora’s Notes
• See shared drive for past papers and solutions. Addtional resources on discourse coherence:
• http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/alex/papers/iwcs4.pdf
• https://www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~ychoi/cse507/slides/06-discourse.pdf
• All slides (2014) in one pdf
• 14/15 slides rough summary: here (Directly exported from org-mode, so algorithms and formulas are largely missing)

HCI - Human Computer Interaction | drps, info Edit on GitHub

• Cheat Sheet (In Progress)
• Bollocks Index (In Progress)
• HCI Reading notes

IAML - Introductory Applied Machine Learning Edit on GitHub

• See shared drive for some unofficial solutions.
• An amazing online course at Caltech by Yaser Abu-Mostafa - link
• A very detailed yet simple visual explanation of PCA, applied to a real-world scenario (on stats.stackexchange)
• Clearer (than our slides) explanation of SVMs
• Visual explanations of ML and Linear Algebra concepts
  • Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues
  • Principal Component Analysis
• A good explanation of Information Gain and Entropy
• Examinable topics summary - Having analysed IAML exam papers from 2012 to date, here is the summary of topic covered.
  • To help with the understanding of topics that come across more often than others, score = frequency of occurance, expressed as % over 12
• Student notes:
  • athiyadeviyani
  • makspll
  • mrknmc
  • georgeka98

IAR Edit on GitHub

May 2013, May 2012, May 2011, May 2010

Revision notes 2014 - collective effort

Revision notes

IDB - Introduction to Databases | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

Previously named Database Systems (DBS)

• Questions and answers from the DBS textbook - link
• Normalization tool
• Revision notes by Ben Shaw
• Functional dependency closure / key finder / minimal cover / 3NF & BCNF checker tool (source)
• Relational algebra calculator / engine, example schema definition for tutorial 1
• Exam tips:
  • Don’t forget semicolons, they will knock marks off for this!
  • They want to see efficient solutions!
  • Derivation using the Armstrong’s axioms: all steps and axioms in your derivation should be clearly mentioned
    • It’s also worth understanding that there could be multiple correct proofs for a given implication so detailed explanations would make it easier for marker
  • Relational algebra questions: consider how your answer behaves when certain relations are empty (tutorial 1, question 3)
• Relational algebra FAQ:
  • Operations only return unique tuples. That means if you project on a single column, each row will be unique. This is because (definition) “Relations (tables) are sets of records of the same length”
• easily consumable stuff by b0rk:
  • sql queries don’t start with select
  • sql query steps
  • anatomy of an sql query
  • how sql joins work
• SQL to XXX FAQ (for those with experience in SQL/NoSQL)
  • Relational algebra:
    • project (pi)
      • select id, name, city from customers;
      • RethinkDB (NoSQL) people will know this as .pluck
    • select (sigma)
      • select * from customers where name = 'Alice' or name = city
      • RethinkDB (NoSQL) people will know this as .filter
  • Unknowns / NULL
    • Unknown is represented as NULL in SQL,
    • unknown = unknown is really NULL = NULL,
    • all comparisons where at least one of the arguments is NULL, evaluates to unknown (which, again, is NULL).

ILP - Informatics Large Practical learn | drps, info Edit on GitHub

• Mapbox:
  • Show a user’s location (tutorial), Showing device location (location component docs)
• User management tutorial
• Bora M. Alper’s ILP Visualiser

IMC - Introduction to Modern Cryptography | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

• IMC Past Papers

INF1A - Functional Programming | drps, info Edit on GitHub

• Tip by a tutor for the final exam: the exam is open book, so taking in a copy of the previous year’s exam paper and solutions may be beneficial
• Past papers
• Exam allocations
• Tree traversal algorithms (view in desktop mode!)
• Learn You A Haskell (official online book, downloadable for exam)
• Basic/library function list, Handy basic function cheat sheet
• Troubleshooting for Haskell (including Haskell-mode on Emacs)
• Functional Programming blog/tutorials by Kyle Cotton
• Articles on Recursion and List Comprehension by Eric Janto

INF1A - Logic | drps, info Edit on GitHub

• Solution to the original 4d on the take home exam
• The venn diagram generator (based on the official version)
• Definitions (also available on Quizlet)
• CNF cheat sheet
• Propositional formula to CNF converter
• boolexman (boolean expression manipulator)
• Visualizing satisfiability, validity & entailment
• Soundness and Completeness
• Finite State Machines
  • FSM Workbench (also contains subset construction)
  • simulator, regex/automaton converter
• Regular Expressions
  • regex/automaton converter
  • Learn Regex Interactively
  • Learn Regex The Easy Way
  • Learn about regular expressions (has a great cheatsheet)

INF2-FDS - Foundations of Data Science | drps, info Edit on GitHub

(New course: Details are sparse. Please contribute!)

50% coursework, 50% exam.

• General Reading
  • Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig
  • Computational and Inferential Thinking by Ani Adhikari and John DeNero
  • An Introduction to Data Ethics by Shannon Vallor et al.
  • Modern Mathematical Statistics with Applications by Devore & Berk
• Basic Tutorials
  • Python
  • Numpy
  • Jupyter Notebooks
• Cheatsheets
  • Cheatsheets
• Course Notes
  • NotAllThingsFDS_w1w9 (2021-2022, Semester 1)

INF2-IADS - Intro to Algorithms and Data Structures | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

• Introduction to ADS (gitbook, non inf)
• Amazing interactive examples from from USFCA
• Wikibook covering most of the stuff we are doing
• Karatsuba Multiplication in 13 minutes (video, watchable at 1.25x)
• Unofficial Past Paper Solutions
• Course Notes INF2B - Algorithms (2018)
• Community Solutions to CLRS (4th ed.)
• For all things iads: Abdul Bari

INF2B - Learning Edit on GitHub

75% closed book exam, 25% across two courseworks. Pass: 40% overall.

• What is a neural network? (3blue1brown)
• Using neural nets to recognise handwritten digits
• Revision Formulae for Learning Thread (pdf) (LaTex)
• Learning notes (2017-18) by Edwin Onuonga (html, pdf)
  Missing: perceptrons, single-layer and double-layer neural networks sections
• Pearson Correlation Coefficient
  • Benedict K’s YouTube series
  • Calculating correlation coefficient r (KhanAcademy)

coursework

• MATLAB for use at home (free)
• Installing GNU Octave on macOS (much lighter than MATLAB)
• NumPy: quickstart tutorial
• Example Lab using numpy, scipy, pandas, and matplotlib: Similarity and recommender systems
• Why can’t I paste using Ctrl+V in MatLab??? - The default settings are odd. Go to Preferences -> MATLAB -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts, change Emacs Default Set to Windows Default Set.
• Run MATLAB scripts from the command line
• Inf2B File Checker
• Intuition of the relation between PCA and eigenvectors (useful for 2019 coursework)
• Relevant bits from Vision processing at Stanford:
  • Interactive veronoi knn explorer
  • Interactive SVM examples, similar to discriminant functions
  • Linear classifiers the content seems to better explain the lectures on NN and discriminant functions

INF2C - Computer Systems | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

• Binary number system
  • Binary arithmetic
  • Two’s complement
  • 16bit floating point numbers
  • Floating Point numbers explained visually
• MIPS - visit this page for lots of resources on MIPS
• Tools:
  • myMars - a custom version of Mars with some minor additional features
  • Orthodox MIPS - are all my instructions in “The Bible”?
  • Coursework 1 (2017/18) Task B (pig latin) unit test
  • Compiler Explorer
• Datapath:
  • Instruction Breakdown/Datapath Tutorial (Video)
  • ECEN350: MIPS Datapath Tutorial (Part 2) (Video)
• Logic Design:
  • Excellent tutorial on sequential logic
• Caches:
  • Colorful slides on caches
  • Implementing LRU - Georgia Tech (Video)

ITCS - Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

• ITCS concepts (from Julian’s guide!) - Here
• Tutorial notes - Here (Shared GDrive) (original page: link)
• Some useful definitions and proofs - link

IVR - Introduction to Vision and Robotics Edit on GitHub

• Official exam papers and solutions
• Collaborative answers to short questions
• Sample solution for 2011 August - link
• Sample vision MATLAB code from previous years

Introduction to Linear Algebra drps Edit on GitHub

the maths exams are open book, so take in past paper solutions (with an index) as they reuse questions a lot. they might not necessarily be the same, but they’ll likely be close enough to give you a hand

• Poole textbook: The Nicholson textbook is fairly hard to learn from, so it may be worth finding a copy of David Poole’s Linear Algebra: A Modern Introduction, as it is much better at explaining concepts.
• No bullshit concept maps good for seeing the big picture in the course
• Linear algebra explained in 4 pages good resource to give you general idea. Might be worthwhile to go through it before the start of the course.
• Explanatory videos from Mathapptician
• Khan Academy videos
• Essence of Linear Algebra (videos) by 3blue1brown - covers a large part of the course and gives greatly intuitive ways of understanding what the formulae really represent
• Answers for Poole (3rd edition, 4th edition)
• Symbolab has extremely good support for linear algebra operations (and is great with other areas of maths too)
• Cheat sheet PDFs of the definitions and theorems to save you time in the exam (no need to search through the textbook)
• Not All Things ILA - better ila cheat sheet
• The Exam - 3 hours - Open Book
  Section A: 40% - 6 questions - conceptual questions, a bit like Tophat
  Section B: 60% - 4 questions (pick 3) - longer, conceptual questions
  You may bring:
  • the Poole textbook
  • any non-graphical calculator
  • any notes (written / printed notes, nothing bound)

Jobs Edit on GitHub

• Getting a Gig: A Guide
• CourtneyThurston has some interesting articles:
  • negotiating-major-swe-offers
  • personal-finance-memes-for-tech-teens
  • microsoft-internships
  • negotiating-major-swe-offers
• Cracking the Facebook Coding Interview (copy available on Drive if original deleted)
• Google Tech Dev Guide (there is a section on interview questions)

MLP - Machine Learning Practical | drps, info Edit on GitHub

• Standford course on similar topics
• MLP CW2 2019-20 Marking Rubric

MLPR | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

• Course resources
  • Course website
  • Video content
• Exams
  • 2013
  • 2012
  • 2011
  • 2010
  • 2009

MT Edit on GitHub

• May 2013 Please contribute :)
• May 2012 (work in progress - contributions needed!)
• May 2011 (work in progress - contributions needed!)
• May 2010 (work in progress - contributions needed!)
• April 2009 (work in progress - contributions needed!)

NIP Edit on GitHub

NLU Edit on GitHub

• Sophia’s notes
• Exams:
  • Short questions
  • May 2014
  • August 2012
  • May 2012
  • May 2010

OS - Operating Systems | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

• Useful short OS tutorial - here
• Cambridge OS course notes - here
• Revision Notes by Ben Shaw

Buddy system

• very brief overview
• Intuitive Walkthrough of an example

Object Oriented Programming | drps, info Edit on GitHub

• Online book
• Enable auto complete on Eclipse
• Past papers, and their additional files
• Some past paper answers
• Automarker service - use this to mark your past papers
• Lambda functions tutorial

PA Edit on GitHub

• PA Past Papers
• PA Notes

PI - Professional Issues | drps, info Edit on GitHub

• Official exam papers and solutions
• Condensed slides
• Summary of DPA principles (along with their respective changes in the GDPR)
• GDPR - A Guide to Compliance

PM Edit on GitHub

May 2014, May 2013, May 2012, May 2011, May 2010

PMR | drps, info, papers This course is misplaced. It should be on the year 4 page. April/May exam Edit on GitHub

Exam + Solutions:

• 2000
• 2001
• 2002
• 2003
• 2010
• 2011
• 2012 may
• 2012 May - markdown version
• 2012 dec

PPLS | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

• Some notes on the content, mainly things that are good to be memorised.
• May 2014
• May 2013
• May 2012
• May 2011
• May 2010

Proofs and Problem Solving Edit on GitHub

• Printable notes with all of the course material
• Twelvefold way for combinatorics problems.
• Learning how to use sagemath may come in handy for checking your answers in later parts of the course (especially for modular arithmetic and permutations)
• The course will follow the book A Concise Introduction to Pure Mathematics, by Martin Liebeck, 4th Ed. 015, CRC Press, £25.99
• To pass the course you must achieve an average of more than 40% AND at least 40% in the examination.
• Cheatsheet with all the notations, definitions, theorems, propositions, and examples from the textbook (condensed into 38 pages) grouped by sections: pdf, source

RC Edit on GitHub

• Some notes on content <– formulas, algorithms, some proofs
• May 2013

RL | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

RL Algorithm Map - Which algorithm should you choose? Photo, DrawIO

Exam papers:

• 2020
• 2019
• 2018
• 2017
• 2013
• 2012
• 2011

Note: There are more papers, directly access them from Better Informatics Google Drive.

SAPM Edit on GitHub

• What-you-need-to-know-for-the-exam course summary slides.
• May 2014
• May 2013
• May 2012
• May 2011
• May 2010
• Revision notes by Ben Shaw

SDP - System Design Project | drps, info Edit on GitHub

• Project has changed as of 2017/18:
  • no competitiveness
  • no robots playing football, instead designing an assistive robotic device
  • more details TBC

SP - Secure Programming | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

• Made up mock questions for lack of past papers in 2014 here
• Review questions from lectures
• Format string exploits/attack owasp, introduction

SP - Speech Processing Edit on GitHub

Answers to multiple choice for past papers here.

ST - Software Testing | drps, info Edit on GitHub

• Official exam papers and solutions
• Useful Explanation of MC/DC
• Revision Notes by Ben Shaw

Security Engineering | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

New course in 2022

Self Care Edit on GitHub

• Mental Health
  • EUSA Advice Place - Ask about anything here
  • Nightline - Confidential dial in service, 8pm-8am every term night (call, IM)
  • Edinburgh Crisis Centre - For mental health emergencies
  • Edinburgh Samaritans - A hotline service if you need someone to talk to
  • NHS information on suicide - Information about suicide
  • Your GP is a great source of information, feel free to contact them.
• Physical Health
  • Gyms
    • Pleasance Sports Centre - 6am to 10pm weekdays, 9am to 8pm weekends
    • PureGym Quartermile - 24 hours
  • Beginner’s Fitness
    • SL 5x5 - Simple, effective strength routine.
    • C25K - Couch to 5K: train for a 5K from nothing in 10 weeks.
    • Runkeeper - Track your outdoor runs, plus audio training
  • Beginner’s Nutrition / Weight Loss
    • /r/loseit wiki - A good intro to safe, healthy weight loss
    • /r/gainit wiki - A good intro to gaining muscle mass
    • MyFitnessPal - Easily track calories, macros, and exercise
    • 20 tips for eating well cheaply from the NHS
• Student life tips
  • /r/malefashionadvice and /r/femalefashionadvice - Look your best to feel your best
  • BudgetBytes - Ditch Deliveroo, save money by cooking yourself
  • The CompSoc Cookbook - Student curated recipes to cook yourself
  • 18-25 Railcard - Save 1/3 fare on train tickets for £30/yr
  • Unidays - Student discounts on just about everything

TTDS - Text Technologies in Data Science | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

Called Text Technologies (TTS) until 2015

Crowdsourced solutions

There are some “hidden” formulas about LSH error probabilities in the lectures.

An overall studyguide for TTS 2013-2014: all lecture slides summarized added things from notabene, said in lecture, and just figured out by Sophia.

Topic history

* means that this has ALL THREE OPTIONAL QUESTIONS

Technical Edit on GitHub

• Set your initial DICE password
• DICE Troubleshooting - audio not working? window manager crashing?
• Web printing interfaces: EveryonePrint, WebPrint, ManagePrint
• How to print:
  • Colour: lpr -o sides=two-sided-long-edge -P cloudc0 FILENAME.pdf
  • Mono: lpr -o sides=two-sided-long-edge -P cloudm0 FILENAME.pdf
• Remote access to DICE machines
• Access DICE files in a web browser (iFile)
• Accessing DICE remotely (RDP, remote desktop)
• Virtual DICE (VM) : Supports VirtualBox, VMWare support under development
• University VPN service
• DICE contact form (computing support)
• Information Services contact form (unidesk)
• GPU on DICE (for Tensorflow GPU, etc) - read GPGPU Computing

    export PATH=/opt/cuda-10.0.130/bin:$PATH
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/cuda-10.0.130/lib64:/opt/cuDNN-7.6.0.64_9.2/lib64:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
  

• Setting up Thunderbird 78+ for Office 365 Mail + Calendar

  The University no longer officially supports Thunderbird (due to so many technical problems students faced). However, we (betterinformatics) believe quite a large number of Informatics students use Thunderbird, and therefore provide active and up-to-date instructions here. TB78 is a requirement, as the OAuth2 authentication method was introduced with this update.

  First we’ll set up the mail account.

  1. Add a new Thunderbird mail account. Enter the name and email (which can be either f.last@sms.ed.ac.uk or sUUN@ed.ac.uk, or any of the other countless aliases we have)
  2. Click “Configure Manually”, and enter:
     • Incoming: IMAP, outlook.office365.com, port 993 SSL/TLS, and your sUUN@ed.ac.uk email as the username (overwrite if necessary)
     • Outgoing: SMTP, outlook.office365.com, port 587 STARTLS, and your sUUN@ed.ac.uk email as the username (also overwrite if necessary)
  3. Click “Advanced Config”, confirm the warning, and sign in on the Office login popup. If it doesn’t appear, don’t worry, it’ll appear as you progress through the next steps.
  4. Go to TB Account Settings, and under Server Settings for the new account, set the Authentication Method to OAuth2.
  5. In addition, under the Outgoing Server settings (bottom of account list), edit the Office365 server and set the Authentication Method to OAuth2 here too. Make sure the username here is your sUUN@ed.ac.uk (regardless of which format you chose first)
  6. At this point, your mail should start loading. If some folders are not visible, you may have to manually subscribe to them (search Google)

  Now onto setting up Calendar integration, so you can respond to meeting invitations using the TB interface.

  1. Install the “TbSync” add-on, and the “Provider for Exchange ActiveSync” add-on.
  2. From the footer of the mail tab, click on the TbSync status on the far bottom right. Then click “Account Actions” -> “Add new” -> “Exchange ActiveSync”.
  3. Choose Office365, and fill the Account name with what you chose in step 1 of the email phase, and fill the Username with sUUN@ed.ac.uk.
  4. Click “Add Account” and sign in on the Office login popup.
  5. Tick “Enable and synchronise this account” to enable, then tick “Calendar” and “Contacts” (optional) and hit “Synchronise Now”.
  6. Once they are synchronised, set the sync interval to 15 minutes.
  7. All done :)