Homework Tips

• THINK VISUALLY!!! Many students (especially first time C & M'ers) have a lot of trouble with this. The C & M classes are designed to make you think about math in terms of objects that you can see, and operations upon those objects. In keeping with that, visualization is very important in C & M.
• Work with a partner!!! The main benefit of working with someone is that in the process of solving a problem, you end up talking about what is being worked on. This conversation is vitally important to understanding what exactly it is that you are doing, and makes learning the material much easier.
• Ask questions!!! Your class assistant and instructor can help, but they have to know what you are having trouble with. Outside of class, you can talk to a lab instructor in the lab, or go online into the C & M chat room. That is located in your CourseSpace page in the toolbar. For more general questions, submit a question to the C & M employees using the link in the toolbar to the left. If you have problems, take advantage of the resources available.
• For first time students: don't be afraid of the code!!! The amount of code that you have to know to do well in the class is very little, but we certainly encourage experimentation, and the more you play around with the code, the more you learn. Skill with Mathematica is a handy thing to have around.
• Always run the initialization cells in the lessons. These contain code that the lessons need to run properly.
• Save your homework in the "Save your files here" folder often!! Mathematica will crash on you after you have worked for hours at some point, and if you haven't saved recently, all your work will be lost!!! Do not let this happen to you!!!
• If you are working with lesson files from C&M Lessons, you should first save them in a local file. To do so, just drag and drop them into the "Save your files here" folder, then drop them on the "Make Mathematica" application.

To submit homework:

1. Go to the ClassComm website (http://cm.math.uiuc.edu/classcomm/)
2. Enter your login and password (see your CA if you don't know it)
3. Select your class from the drop down list.
4. On left there is a list of options . . .click on Homework
5. Find the assignment, and click on Submit Homework
6. Click on the browse button and find your local file and give it a name in the second field
7. Click on submit

To save to your students account via FTP:

Using Netscape/IE:

1. Open Netscape or Internet Explorer (in the Application folder in the lab)
2. In Location type ftp://username(your netID)@students.uiuc.edu
3. Enter password
4. To copy your lesson to your ftp account, open the "Save your files here" folder on desktop and drag the icon of your lesson file to the Netscape window
5. To get a lesson from your ftp just drag file from the Netscape window to the Save your files here icon
6. To make the file a Mathematica file, drag your file icon to the Make Mathematica icon in Applications

Using Fetch/WS FTP:

1. Open Fetch or WS FTP
2. Enter the server (students.uiuc.edu), and your netID and password.
3. You can drag and drop files much like you would from a local folder. Fetch and WS FTP have some useful features that Netscape lacks, like the option to delete files in the Remote menu.

(Thanks to Allison Rodden for the help with this stuff!!!)