Administrative matters
This is just a recap of our first lab this Wednesday. To start things off, I’d like to make sure that the administrative matters are dealt with before next lab. We skipped over these during the lab so that we can get as far into the actual course content as possible.
By now, everyone should be able to log onto the School of IT (SIT) undergraduate computers using your UniKey username and your SIT password. Note that the computers outside of the undergraduate labs are actually part of the postgraduate Masters of IT (MIT) lab, so don’t worry if you can’t log onto those.
So that was your SIT account. Now to get onto eLearning, you use your UniKey account to log onto MyUni. It’s pretty much the only website you need to remember for your Uni stuff including the eLearning link on the right hand side. (This is the Uni-wide account, not SIT specific.) Make sure that you know how to get to the lecture notes and the labs. The first Matlab lecture, Excel lecture and lab should be there already. Next, check out the Discussions section. I want you to go and make a test post on the Discussions if you haven’t done so already. It’s a good idea to stay tuned to the discussions page throughout the semester, because if you’re having trouble with something in ENGG1801, it’s very likely that someone else is also having the same problems.
Finally, jump to the SPOT exercises and try your hand at them. They’re not difficult, but they do reflect the topics we want you to understand as part of the course. It’s not assessable (in fact we can’t even see your scores), and they’re a great way to revise. Remember that your first quiz will be similar in style to the SPOT exercises.
Next lab, I’ll show you some hidden features about your USYD email account and perhaps some better ways of getting to your email.
Course material
Clarification points brought up in Lab 1:
- Excel treats every cell that begins with a ‘=’ as a formula. If you want to just typea bit of text starting with =, then be sure to preceed that with a quote: ‘
- Cell formatting. Formatting is copied from a cell that is being referenced to the cell you’re editing only if it doesn’t already have a formatting and only after you update the cell. If you change formatting of the referenced cell afterwards, that formatting will not be copied again.
- Using functions. To call a function in excel, use the syntax “Function(parameters, …)” Some of you (intuitively?) used the notation “(Function arguments …)” which will not work in Excel, although it might work if you’re programming in Lisp.
- With functions, you can pretty much treat them the same as a value. So instead of passing a value into a function e.g. “F(123)”, you can swap that argument with another function instead e.g. “F(G(123))”. This is called nesting functions.
- Be sure to understand what excel is trying to tell you. It will save you a lot of trouble finding out why your formula is not working if you know the difference between #NAME?, #####, #NUM!, #DIV/0, #REF!, #VALUE!, #N/A, and #NULL!.
- At some point, you might need to combine the boolean results of two or more functions into a single value summarising the two outputs. To do that, you’d need to use a boolean function, or “Logical functions” as excel calls them. Hit F1 for help in excel, and look up logical functions to see which logical function you’d use and how you actually type it up (i.e. the syntax).
- For the last exercise there, unforunately excel doesn’t understand IF(A2 = F2 = K2, value_if_true, value_if_false).
If you need any help, email me on engg1801help@it.usyd.edu.au.
See you next week!
ET