Better Informatics

view semester 1 view semester 2 view all

ADS · CARD · CCS · COMN · CT · EPL · FNLP · IDB · ILP · ITCS · OS · PI · SDP · ST

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

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

AR - Automated Reasoning Edit on GitHub

2010 solutions on Drive
May 2012,

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

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

Bits And Bobs

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

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)

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.

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:

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 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).