New Service!
Better Informatics has launched BetterInformatics File Collection to replace the shared Drive:
files.betterinformatics.com
Please use it for your studies and contribute!
We are also actively looking for people to help maintain BetterInformatics services. Chat with us on Discord or email!
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
Cognitive Science | drps, info, papers April/May exam 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
Linear Algebra 1 drps Edit on GitHub
Until 2024, a similar course called “Introduction to Linear Algebra” ran. Not everything is the same since the change to “Linear Algebra 1”. Beware when using checking old exams or other people’s notes!
- Poole textbook: The Nicolson 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
Object Oriented Programming | drps, info None exam 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
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