The basic operation of the course is as follows. Each chapter starts with the pre-lab sheet. It contains background, exercises to be worked by hand, and may mention the larger questions which will be taken up in the computer lab. Each student turns in their individual answers to pre-lab questions the following class, which is . . . The next 2-3 classes are held in the lab.
Students work through the lab notebooks in teams of two.
Exercises are intended to be straightforward while research questions are not. Typically, the research questions will require experimentation, forming of conjectures, and proofs. We expect students to make varying degrees of progress on these questions. Then, there is 1 or 2 classes where teams of 2 pair up to make teams of 4. These groups compare notes and improve their results to produce a single report.