Means and Evaluation: We believe these goals are best attained by immersion, i.e., by constant exposure to native MATLAB speakers in a number of distinct engineering settings. Though distinct, these settings will all reduce to problems of network simulation or design and will showcase a number of important numerical methods. In order to bring you to fluency we have constructed weekly two part MATLAB assignments. After the first assignment, each assignment will consist of a first draft and a final draft. First drafts are due Friday by 1pm, final drafts are due 1pm Monday. All work is to be submitted to the assignment page in owlspace. The final two assignments are pledged, and so first drafts are not necessary and students may consult no one other than the course instructors and TA while working on these assignments. While the first 13 assignments are unpledged we nonetheless will enforce a certain degree of independence.
First Draft: First drafts are to be completed individually (you may consult with your classmates before sitting down to write your draft, but you must write it yourself based on your own understanding of the assignment). All first drafts must consist of MATLAB comments that form a pseudo-code outline of the program to be written for that assignment. They should be entered inline at Owlspace by 1pm each Friday. Further guidelines will be given in class, and as part of the rubric for each assignment that requires a first draft.
A late draft will be accepted only in the case that
(1) owlspace is down for a significant period, or
(2) the student will be traveling Thursday and Friday and has
been granted late permission by the instructor prior to the due date.
Final Drafts: The bulk of the nonpledged assignments (coding and debugging) may be completed individually or in groups of at most three students. However, each student must turn in their own assignment with all headers and comments written individually. Written explanations and summaries must also be completed individually. (Like the first drafts, it is expected that these writings may reflect ideas developed in conjunction with other students. However, the writing must ultimately be done individually and reflect your own understanding.) The main header must include the names of any other group members; anyone working on code together in lab or elsewhere is considered to be in the same group. While you are encouraged to work with other students currently registered in CAAM 210, you are not allowed to consult with students who have taken previous offerings of CAAM 210 for assistance with homework assignments (except the labbies, of course). Use of external tutors must be cleared through your instructor. The appearance of code obviously originating from previous semesters is considered to be a serious honor code violation. You may, without penalty, submit up to two assignments up to one class period beyond their due date. In other words, if an assignment is due in class on Monday, you can turn in a "late" assignment up until class that Wednesday. Subsequent late submissions beyond the allowed limit of two will incur a 10% penalty per assignment. Note that late submissions will likely be returned later than on-time assignments. Also, no assignment submitted later than one class period beyond its due date will be accepted.
CAAM 210 Report Generator and Sample mfile
Exceptional Situations: You should notify your instructor as soon as possible should any illness or emergency situation arise that may cause you to miss the deadline for any assignment or exam, as per the Student Health "No Note" policy.
Grades: Your grade will be determined solely on the basis of the 15 assignments. The first 13 assignments are unpledged and are each worth 6% of your grade. The final two assignments are pledged and each are worth 11% of your grade. Marks on your individual assignments will be posted on your section's OWL-Space page.
Resources: Make use of your instructor's and/or teaching assistant's office hours. If these hours are inconvenient please ask to schedule an appointment. The TA offers a help/review session every Thursday 7-9pm. The Friday lab is there for your benefit. It runs 2-5pm. We ask that people work in groups of 2-3 per machine. Machines are first come first served and are at their busiest from 2 until 3. No textbooks are required for this course. The definitive resource lives online at Mathworks. We will make constant use of this. It is NOT necessary to purchase any software for CAAM 210. MATLAB is available on virtually all campus machines. Here is a list of campus computer labs.
You may access MATLAB on Owlnet from your campus room upon installing ssh and Xwin32. Both are free to Rice students. If you live off campus you may need to first establish a VPN account. All questions regarding installation and use of ssh, xWin32 or VPN should be addressed to the helpdesk.