Assignment 1: Report and Marking Scheme

Report

For your report, you are to produce a single pdf, with 2.5cm margins, two columns, and 10pt font (Times New Roman). Aim for half a page of content. Max one page. This should include your and your partners' names and student numbers. Add the pdf, named report1.pdf, into your "a1" repository, and commit the file. Be sure to cite any sources you use.

I recommend LaTeX for producing your documents; you may, however, use Word or OpenOffice and convert the file to pdf. A single bonus mark will be given to students who use LaTeX to produce their reports. If you do so, hand in the .tex file along with the .pdf file to demonstrate to the marker that you used LaTeX. I have provided a LaTeX template for you to use (output).

There are three sections to your report; please indicate them clearly.

  1. Section 1: In Lab 1 Part 1, what execution times did you observe for mean_temps.c and mean_temps.py?
    1. Which was faster?
    2. Why do you think one was faster (or why they were the same)?
    3. Was there a difference in "user time" and "system time" for the two? Why?
  2. Section 2: In Lab 1 Part 2, what execution times did you observe for array_traversal_col and _row in Matlab and C?
    1. Was there a difference between the C programs? If so, which was faster? Why would there be a difference?
    2. What about the two Matlab programs? If so, which was faster? Why would there be a difference?
    3. Was C faster than Matlab? Why?
  3. Section 3: In Lab 2 Part 2, did the distributions we looked at follow Benford's Law?
    1. Why or why not?
    2. How can you tell?
    3. Include any results of any statistical tests.

Marking Scheme