University Computing Service course timetable

Stata is a powerful general purpose statistical package.

This course is for beginners and fairly new users of the package. Basic concepts and use of Stata will be introduced. The main aim of the course is to give participants a foundation and some background. However statistical techniques are not covered (see note below).

The first session looks at an overview of the Stata system and getting data into Stata format and the second looks at reporting, graphing and analyses. It is strongly recommended for anyone likely to use Stata for any but the very simplest analysis of the very simplest data.

This course extends the basic use of Microsoft Word 2007 for Windows, in particular the features which affect the arrangement & look of a printed page.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

This is a basic introduction to modern Fortran. At the end of the course, students should be able to write significant programs in Fortran, and to be able to start working on existing programs written in modern Fortran (i.e. in the Fortran 90/95 style). It will not cover obsolete features of Fortran, some of the more advanced aspects, or most of the extensions introduced by Fortran 2003.

The course has been rewritten in the light of experience from last year, and will include less on the concepts of programming and more on what practical Fortran programmers need to know (such as a session on Fortran I/O).

This two-part course will build on the simple style sheets produced in the introductory courses. The aim is to give you a full appreciation of how stylesheets work and how to work with them, and using them as an integral part of producing web pages and sites.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

It is common for a student or researcher to find a piece of software or to have one thrust upon them by a supervisor which they must then build, install and use. It is a myth that any of this requires system privilege. This course demonstrates the building, installation and use of typical software ranging from trivially easy examples (the "configure, make, install" scheme) through to the evils of badly written Makefiles. Common errors and what they mean will be covered and by the end of the course the student should be able to manage their own software without needing to pester their system administrator.

Adobe Photoshop is the favourite image manipulation and editing tool of the professional graphics industry. It enables scanned-in photographs, pictures and graphics files to be edited and offers a dazzling array of drawing, special effects and filtering tools. Knowing where to start with such a comprehensive and feature-filled package can be daunting. This presentation aims to equip new users with the basics, using live demonstrations throughout.

This two-part course will build on the simple style sheets produced in the introductory courses. The aim is to give you a full appreciation of how stylesheets work and how to work with them, and using them as an integral part of producing web pages and sites.

Talk, don't type: reduce RSI and increase work productivity by dictating text and controlling your PC by voice. This course, which is of particular benefit to users wishing to prevent or reduce the impact of RSI, gives an introduction to Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice activated software. At the end of the course, the student will be able to control his/her PC and produce notes and documents by voice.

This introductory course covers the basic concepts of the relational database package Filemaker Pro. Each participant will design a small database.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

It is common for a student or researcher to find a piece of software or to have one thrust upon them by a supervisor which they must then build, install and use. It is a myth that any of this requires system privilege. This course demonstrates the building, installation and use of typical software ranging from trivially easy examples (the "configure, make, install" scheme) through to the evils of badly written Makefiles. Common errors and what they mean will be covered and by the end of the course the student should be able to manage their own software without needing to pester their system administrator.

When you write for the web you need to think differently. People dedicate very little time to reading a web page and so it is essential they see what they need and understand it with the minimum of difficulty. This short course aims to give you the skills to produce web pages that do just this.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

This course will introduce more advanced aspects of the Python language than the "Python for Absolute Beginners" course or "Python for Programmers" courses. The course will cover topics such as file I/O in more detail than either of those two courses. Whilst the course will not cover the use of Python to produce graphical output, some mention will be made of how Python can be used to interface with tools such as gnuplot to produce graphical output of scientific data.

This course does not explicitly cover the object oriented aspects of the Python language.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

It is common for a student or researcher to find a piece of software or to have one thrust upon them by a supervisor which they must then build, install and use. It is a myth that any of this requires system privilege. This course demonstrates the building, installation and use of typical software ranging from trivially easy examples (the "configure, make, install" scheme) through to the evils of badly written Makefiles. Common errors and what they mean will be covered and by the end of the course the student should be able to manage their own software without needing to pester their system administrator.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

No previous experience of shell scripting is required for this course; however some knowledge of the interactive use of the bash shell is a prerequisite (see Simple Shell Scripting for Scientists: Prerequisites for details).

This course introduces shell scripting in bash for scientific computing tasks. Day one introduces very basic shell scripts in bash which process the command line in a simple fashion. Day two covers how to write more advanced shell scripts in bash. Day three covers how to make one's shell scripts more robust.

At the end of each day one or more exercises are set. It is VERY IMPORTANT that attendees attempt these exercises before the next day of the course. Attendees should make sure that they have allowed themselves sufficient study time for these exercises between each day of the course.

This course will introduce XML (the Extensible Markup Language). The course will cover the use of XHTML 1.0 which is a reformulation of HTML 4.01 in XML. The course will also introduce and use XSL (the eXtensible Markup Language).

Macromedia Dreamweaver is a powerful web creation tool that allows non-technical people to produce professional websites. This course provides a practical introduction for those that wish to use Dreamweaver to create web-pages and manage websites. It focuses on building a small website.

LaTeX is a powerful document description language built on top of TeX. It is available on Unix, Windows and Macintoshes. It can be used for the presentation of plain text (including accented characters and letters outside the English alphabet), the typesetting of mathematics, the generation of tables, and producing simple diagrams. It is particularly suited for the writing of theses, papers and technical documents.