Month: March 2020

COVID19 Regression Model and Other Thoughts

March 28, 2020
I am not an epidemiologist but do regression modeling for a living. I have done regression modeling to predict student grades just after the first test, and now we will be using adaptive learning metrics to improve our identification schemes even earlier in the semester. It is not to spell boom or doom to a student but only to intervene early with personalized recommendations.
Looking at whatever data I can use and have time to scrape, four things are reasonably clear at this time to me about COVID19.
1) First, the rate of infection is exponential but it does not stay like that forever.  The logistic function of the infection rate is analogous to how the mass of a moving rocket decreases as it burns up its fuel. F=ma, but m is not a constant.
2) Second, President Trump is finally thinking about quarantining NY, NJ, CT area. A little late but it will definitely decrease the power of the exponent.
3) Third, we have to get more testing done but one which is totally random. We could have found the effect of the spring breakers coming to FL and of the college kids being sent home to parents who are having kids late in life. Please do not send your grandkids to grandpa/grandma’s retirement home. They may be the children of the corn.
4) Fourth, Florida and Louisiana need to get their head straightened out and use tougher rules to keep people inside and a method to keep outsiders out. They are the next hot zone.

How to Make a PDF file

Before COVID19 hit our lives, it was so easy for the student to submit a hard copy.  Now with soft copies being asked for, they and the instructors have to learn a bit.

So, I had this programming assignment before COVID19 closed our face-to-face classes. It involved handwritten pages, a published file, and writing out a short description of conclusions with equations in a word processor.  The student would print them all out at home or at the university, and collate them.  But now it has to be scanned and uploaded to the CANVAS learning management system.

So, if these three types of documents were to be uploaded as one pdf file, what would you do.  I am assuming that everyone has a smartphone (an iPhone or an android phone)

If you have a printer and a scanner

Print all the documents and scan the document as a pdf file

If you have a printer but no scanner

Print all the documents.  Download the CamScanner app on your iPhone or Android and follow the instructions of this YouTube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkYlGa3y4tk?start=0&end=196

Follow the directions up to the time it tells you how to email the document as I do not want you to email it to me.

If you have neither a printer nor a scanner

a) Take the handwritten documents. Download the CamScanner app on your iPhone or Android and follow the instructions of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkYlGa3y4tk?start=0&end=196

Follow the directions up to the time it tells you how to email the document as I want you to upload it to CANVAS.

b) For typing the pages that include equations, use MS 365 Word, and develop your document.  Save it as a .docx file first, and only then save it as .pdf file.  You can save a document as a pdf file within MS 365 Word itself.

c) a MATLAB file can be published as a pdf file. See https://blog.autarkaw.com/2020/03/25/how-to-publish-in-matlab/

d) Merge pdf documents with Acrobat Pro. Did you know as a USF student you can download Adobe Acrobat for free?  It is a tool to make PDF files from wordprocessor docs as well as to merge them with other PDFs.  If you are a reader outside USF and do not have Acrobat Pro as it costs money, use https://smallpdf.com/merge-pdf. Just drag the pdf files, and it will merge them for you.

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The brute force way

(not recommended though but desperate times require desperate measures)

a) Take photos of each handwritten page.  Send the images to your email and save them on your computer.   Insert images (Insert -> Pictures in Word Menu) of the handwritten work into an MS 365 Word doc. But check your file size. It can get too big for CANVAS to handle and your internet to upload.  The limit may be 100MB.

b) For typing the pages that include equations, continue with the MS Word doc.

c) a MATLAB file can be published as a doc file. See https://blog.autarkaw.com/2020/03/25/how-to-publish-in-matlab/  Cut and paste it into the word doc.

d) Save it as a .docx file first, and only then save it as .pdf file.  You can save a document as a pdf file within MS 365 Word itself.

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How to PUBLISH in MATLAB

This is how you can get your mfile published.

Click anywhere in the mfile (if your cursor is not in the mfile, you may not get the proper menu open)

-> Go to PUBLISH
-> Click on Down Black Arrow under Publish
-> Choose Edit Publishing Option
-> click on Output file format and the right column entry will show html, but if you click on html, you will get a drop-down box as shown in the figure below.  Choose your option.

You can click on the figure below to see a larger version of the figure.

Watch the short video which illustrates the above.  Better to watch it in full screen.

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Ability to break long fprintf statements

Problem:
A student sent me an email – ” I can’t figure out how to continue my text on another line in the editor while using the fprintf command in MATLAB.  It seems like this should be something simple, but I can’t figure it out.  The closest thing I have tried is:
fprintf(‘filler filler filler’, …
‘filler filler’)

When I run this script, this only displays the content within the first set of quotes though.

Solution:
Assign the long strings to variables, and then use the fprintf statements

abc=’My name is’
def=’ Slim Shady, also known as Marshall Mathers’
fprintf([abc def])

or you could do the following, especially if you have other non-string variables to print

abc=’My name is’
def=’ Slim Shady, also known as Marshall Mathers’
fprintf(‘%s %s’,abc,def)

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On Making A Video Lecture on iPad and Uploading to YouTube

On Making A Video Lecture on iPad and Uploading to YouTube

Guest Blogger: Rasim Guldiken

Date: March 20, 2020

While we are scrambling to take the courses we teach from face-to-face format to remote format, we all could use simple tools to make the process simple and easy to implement.  I have created two extensive tutorials.

The first tutorial  shows step-by-step instructions on screencasting your lecture with an iPad using any stylus, editing the video in the Imovie app of iPad, uploading it to YouTube, or directly to your LMS.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd3DqY6GsYE]

The second tutorial illustrates on how to embed any YouTube video to your Canvas LMS course content.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji_a5BH0uvM]

I have been recording and uploading the videos to my Canvas course since Spring 2019, but following the same procedure has been frustrating as it takes several hours for videos to process. I really can’t blame anyone; there is an unprecedented load to the servers.

That is the reason I created this alternative method tutorial on using 1) YouTube as a platform to upload and store your content  and then 2) embedding the videos to Canvas.

This process works flawlessly as the videos are not stored on the LMS servers.

About the guest blogger

Dr. Rasim Guldiken is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Florida.  His engineering education interests lie in open courseware for a course in Fluid Mechanics, metacognitive activities, and flipped learning.

Why Do We Use Numerical Methods?

Numerical methods are techniques to approximate mathematical procedures (an example of a mathematical procedure is an integral).

Approximations are needed because we either cannot solve the procedure analytically (an example is the standard normal cumulative distribution function)

or because the analytical method is intractable ( an example is solving a set of a thousand simultaneous linear equations for a thousand unknowns for finding forces in a truss)

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