1.1. Theory

We won’t introduce any new theory here. There isn’t any to cover in Week 1 beyond that in Part 1 of the notes. There are no labs this week to give you time to read those notes. There is quite a lot of material in Part 1 - the notes are not a 5 minute read! In this course, in most weeks we have 4 hours of timetabled labs, and the associated assignments are expected to take approximately an hour each. Week 1 is thus not a week off, it is just using the time allocated to the course differently.

In general, we would advise you to read the Part 1 notes once, at the start of the course. There’s quite a few notes and so it will take a good few hours, but it will be time well spent. There will likely be lots of items that you don’t completely follow or don’t make sense. Don’t dwell on them for too long. Press on and read through everything before starting the labs. This will give you the best starting point. Then, come back to the Part 1 notes at the end of the course and read through them again. After you’ve done all of the labs, lots of things which you didn’t completely follow at first will likely make much more sense.