IT1005
Lab session on week 5
About your Lab TA
• Name: Steven Halim (Indonesian)
• Occupation:
– Full time teaching assistant
– Part time PhD student
• Not yet professor, so just call me by name!
• Want to graduate soon >.<
• My problem:
– I am handling 5 lab groups this semester
• That means 5*~20 = ~100 students
• 100 emails/lab submissions per week
To make life easier for me
• E-mail answers to: stevenhalim at gmail.com
• With subject header:
– “IT1005-LabGroupID” “FullName”,
• e.g. IT1005-7A StevenHalim
– I will ask Mr Gmail to sort your emails for me =)
• Try to submit your answers ONCE only
– Do not submit again to fix some minor mistakes!
• Shorter (but correct) answers ~ better marks =)
• Remember, I have ~100 emails/week !
Just some highlights on the rules posted by Colin
IT1005 Lab Policies
Applies to Lab 2 onwards
Lab Location
• Lab sessions begin Monday 11 Feb 2008.
• All A groups are at SOC1/815 PC Lab 2.
• All B groups are at COM1/114 Embedded Systems
Teaching Lab 1.
• You can use your own computer/laptop
• You can use the MATLAB clusters in FOE
– ChBE Clusters at E5-03-24 (24 hour access)
– Check this link for other clusters that you can also use:
http://www.eng.nus.edu.sg/eitu/about_us/aboutus6.htm
Lab Policies
• Lab attendance:
– You are free to do the labs in FoE (or at home) instead of
going down to SoC1/COM1.
– However if you have a question to ask, you can only do it
during the lab session.
• Your tutor will be waiting for you during the session.
• This means that you should at least look through the lab ahead of
the official session in case you need to see him/her.
• Exception for me: you can email me, but the best way to explain is
hands on during the lab session.
• Also with subject header “IT1005 – your question bla bla”
• Try to post questions in IT1005 IVLE Forum first, especially if your
question is generic.
Lab Policies
• Lab Submission
– Electronic submission via email to your respective tutors.
– Your tutors will contact you via email ahead of time so you
know whom to submit to.
– Your grades will be returned to you electronically as well.
– For this, use my gmail subject labeling scheme explained
previously, ok!
You do not need to attend labs!
• MATLABs are available in FoE labs.
• I was told that some of you also have MATLAB in
your very own laptop.
• But…
But it is better to attend labs, why?
• I will review past lectures (~15m).
– I will help you to keep pace with the lectures.
• I will discuss past lab questions (~15m).
– Not just the answers, but also common mistakes, and side
topics around lab questions.
• I will discuss current lab questions (~15m).
– Not the answers, but how to tackle them.
• I will ask stimulating MATLAB questions (~15m).
• 2 hour lab: 1 hour interaction, 1 hour free & easy.
Review of Past Lectures
• http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~stevenha/myteaching
• Click “supplemental materials” for lecture.
Discussion about Lab 0/1
• You can now check your submissions in my website
– Everyone can see each other’s marks/comments >.<
– Sorry for that…
– Special case for lab 0/1 only
• Next time, marks/comments will be sent privately
– You send your report via email
– I will read and reply your email, only you know the marks
Discussion about Lab 0/1-Part A
• Common mistakes
– Changing the story >.<, strong penalty
– Not really answering the question
• e.g. “arrive at lecture”, what lecture? what time?
– Too long winded, fine as long as logical enough
• e.g. 10 large steps vs 3! (Note about human temporary memory)
– Funny story, just make me laugh, no penalty
– Flat answer, no indentation, minor penalty
• You are all different =)
Discussion about Lab 0/1-Part B
• Common mistakes
– Too long winded
Discussion about Lab 0/1-Part C
• Common mistakes or ‘mistakes’
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Average ‘age’? We never say ‘age’ here!
Part i, ii, iii, and iv again! Too long winded
Indentation issue, variable naming issue
Matlab functions vs functions in the problem description!
– disp/sprintf vs say, ~= vs !=, ./ vs /, clear all? (not described)
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Stopping criteria must be -1, not <0 or anything else!
Excessive usage of comments >.<
Division by zero for extreme case :p (-1 at the start)
Slight error, how to correct the effect of -1?
Quick Test
• Simple test to roughly gauge your initial skills:
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Convert this Decimals to Binaries: 10, 20, 32.
Convert this Binaries to Decimals: 101, 1001, 1005.
Tell me the actual value of: 1e2, 2e-1.
Write “Hello <yourname>” in MATLAB.
Compute: 234 / (80 + 2) * 72 – 189 \ 5 + 2 in < 10 seconds.
What is sin(pi)?
Create an array of size 4*5, containing all ‘1’.
[1 2] .* [2 1] =
[3 4]
[2 1]
Lab 2 – Starting Matlab
• Let’s follow the instructions!
Top Down Design
• A hands on…
• Let’s solve this simple problem:
– Steven is a young schoolboy.
– His mother gives him 25$ pocket money per week.
– Steven spends his money wisely.
• By the end of each week, he usually has some money to be saved.
• A random value between 0.0$ to 25.0$
– Steven wants to know his savings over one year.
Extra Materials
• How can you help yourself with MATLAB?
– Visit MathWorks website
• Go to support  documentation.
• e.g. disp versus say, input, sprintf