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JupyterHub and Google Colab instructions

There are two computing platforms for you to work on homework and labs in this course.

JupyterHub

UW-IT JupyterHub gives users access to Jupyter Notebook environments (computational environments and resources) without the hassle of installation and maintenance tasks. You have immediate access to this hub with your NetID.  Click links below:

https://jupyter.rttl.uw.edu/2022-autumn-phys-434-a 

More documents about quick start and tutorials ere here.

Google Colab

Google Colab Links to an external site. is a convenient, free resource for running small-scale Python scripts in your browser without the need to configure an environment yourself. When you first access the tool, you should see a screen like this.

colab_splash.png


To start a new notebook, you can press 'New notebook" in the bottom right. You should find that most common packages you need, such as scipy, numpy and matplotlib are already installed in the environment. If you need a package that is not pre-configured, you can install it as shown here Links to an external site..

As part of the course, we expect that students will maintain a GitHub repository that contains their work. To easily interface with your repository, there are a few steps to take on Colab. 

1. Select the "GitHub" tab from the splash screen shown above. 
2. Authorize Colab to access your GitHub account.
3. Make sure to select the checkbox that includes private repos -- we recommend that you keep your repo private, and explicitly invite your partners as collaborators.
4. If you wish to edit an already-existing notebook that is in your repo, select your repo, branch and notebook from this menu.

Adding a notebook to GitHub


In addition to editing existing notebooks from GitHub on Colab, you can also push new notebooks from Colab to your GitHub repository. To do so, simply run File -> "Save a copy in Github", select your repository for the class, and write an appropriate commit message.

Submitting your work


Once your HW / lab is done, you need to convert it to an html document and upload it to Canvas. To do so, please follow the instructions on this Links to an external site. StackOverflow post.