August 2009 Archives

I've just revised notes for Monday's lecture. Those for Wednesday's lecture will probably be available later today. If you've found the site, you've probably discovered that there are two ways to find the notes.

1. The recommended way: Go to the Schedule page and click on the lecture for a particular day. If the notes for that day's lecture have been revised, you'll find a link to them there. You'll also find anywhere from 0-5 associated readings. Except on days that are designated for case studies, I won't expect you to necessarily read and digest everything that's in them. They're provided for your information and as resources you may find useful as you develop your final project.
2. The not recommended way: Go the the Notes page and click on the title of a topic that sounds interesting. This is not the recommended way, because the notes that are there get revised during the course of the semester. Right now there are a bunch that I haven't looked at in nearly 2 years. When they show up through the Schedule page, you can be sure they're up to date.

Either way, I recommend reading the notes on-line to save paper. The HTML version is probably a little easier to read on-line than the PDF, which you get by clicking on the little icon. But the conversion software I use sometimes screws up the figures, so you may want to take a look at the PDF if you want to examine any of the figures closely. If you decide to print the notes, you should definitely print the PDF version (and use both sides to save paper).

If you happened by this site before, you may notice a few changes. A couple of weeks ago I had a minor catastrophe that caused me to lose the database on which previous versions of the course website were based. I think everything is up and running now. The lecture schedule should be reasonably current, but there are a few things I still need to change.

1. On the Overview page there's a due date for the final project specified, but that's just copied and pasted from the last time I taught this course. I can almost guarantee that it will change.
2. I haven't added assignment dates and due dates for the short projects,¹ and I haven't described expectations for them on the Overview page.
3. I haven't added a breakdown of how course grades will be determined.
4. I haven't added a description of how the "case studies" will work.

I should have all of those things added by late Friday afternoon, but feel free to poke around in the meantime. Just don't hold me to anything as far as grading is concerned yet.