Lab 1: Setting up Your Laptop#
We will use Python for all our coding examples, lab demonstrations, and homeworks. There are multiple ways to write and run a Python code. We will mainly use JupyterLab (Jupyter Notebook) and Google Colaboratory.
Follow the below instructions to set them up.
JupyterLab#
We introduce both command-line interface (CLI) and graphical user interface (GUI) to install jupyterlab. Choose the one that you are comfortable with.
Installing via CLI#
On Mac or Linux#
Follow https://wengroup.github.io/group_manual/computing/conda.html to install conda. Make sure you install Python version 3.10. Then install jupyterlab by running the below commands in your terminal app:
conda install -c conda-forge jupyter
To start jupyterlab, in your terminal app, do
jupyter lab
On Windows#
We recommend to first install the Window subsystem for Linux and then follow the above instructions for Mac and Linux.
Installing via GUI#
Follow https://docs.cems.umn.edu/intro/Prt_01_Lssn_00_Getting_Started.html# to set it up.
Instructions for Windows, Linux, and Mac are all included.
Make sure you install Python version 3.10.
This will install the Anaconda Navigator, from which you can start jupyterlab and install other python packages.
numpy, matplotlib, and other packages#
Make sure you are comfortable install other packages, such as numpy and matplotlib.
CLI users can do it via your terminal.
GUI users who have installed the Anaconda Navigator can follow the instructions here: https://docs.anaconda.com/free/navigator/tutorials/manage-packages.html
Running example notebook#
Make sure you can successfully run the example jupyter notebook: lab1-example.ipynb.
Google Colab#
Google Colab is a cloud hosted notebook service. It is very similar to Jupyter notebook, but you do not need to install it and you can use it for free. The flip side, however, is that the computational resource can be limited sometimes.
Follow instructions at https://colab.research.google.com/ to create new notebooks and play with it. Make sure you can upload lab1-example.ipynb and run it in Colab as well.