CS346 - Useful Links and Additional Notes

  • Instructions for downloading MATLAB onto your computer. Note that this MATLAB, which is available through a Classroom License, may require that your computer have a Colby IP address for it to work, and it is licensed only for use for coursework, not research. (If you'd like more information on using MATLAB for research, feel free to ask your prof.)

    Colby ITS officially does not encourage students to download MATLAB onto their personal machines, and in some cases where installation is not straightforward (e.g., onto an older machine), they note that they may not be able to provide full installation support for each student. MATLAB is also available on lab machines throughout the campus for your use--including all labs in Davis--and for use outside of labs within the Apporto virtual environment.

  • The MATLAB "Getting Started" guide from Mathworks is a good beginning reference.

    Please note that the "Getting Started" guide is not exhaustive--there are many important and useful features of Matlab outside of its scope. Please explore the Matlab help pages (using the help browser, the help and doc commands, the search documentation window in the Matlab environment, etc.) for more about what Matlab can do. And as always, feel free to ask your prof. any questions as well!

  • Some important programming style notes and guidelines for our work with Matlab in CS346 this semester.

  • The paper Can robots make good models of biological behaviour? by Barbara Webb is available through the Colby Library.

  • Anonymous functions in Matlab are similar to the use of lambda expressions in other languages, such as Python. Matlab provides some documentation about anonymous functions in Matlab, but you are welcome to do a web-search for other perspectives and information about anonymous functions as well! (Note: As part of the CS346 philosophy of using only basics and building up, in part to support backwards compatibility, we will use only anonymous function features from the Matlab 2018b documentation, linked here, in CS346 this semester.)

  • Neuroscience Online is an electronic textbook for the neurosciences. Please read Chapters 1 and 2 as part of our work with the Hodgkin-Huxley model of action potentials in neurons.