USING THE WEBPAGE

All of the handouts given in class are posted here. In addition, complete information and data files for the computer assignments can be downloaded from this site. Much of computer assignment information will not be distributed in class and must be downloaded directly from this site to your system. If you will be using several different computers over the course of the semester, it is best to copy the downloaded files to a floppy disk and and carry this with you. This will allow you to work on systems without internet access.

Generally two links are available for each handout. Unless otherwise noted, the first is in html format and should be viewable on all systems. Unfortunately not all browsers support special characters however, and thus the mathematical symbols may be garbled. In addition, your browser interprets html locally and thus will often alter formatting details like space, font type, etc. Finally, html files containing scanned images are quite large and may take several minutes to load. In order to improve these things, a second link to a pdf file is available in most cases. Clicking this link will download a small to modest-sized pdf file which should be identical in format to the handout distributed in class. This is definitely the preferred approach if a printout is to be made. Unless you find the Acrobat Reader interface particularly annoying, you will probably have better luck by simply choosing the pdf file when a choice exists.

In order to view and print the pdf versions, you you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed and your web browser configured correctly. If you are not sure about this, just click on one of the pdf links and see what happens. If your system is set up properly, Acrobat will start up automatically and the handout will be displayed on your screen. If you encounter a dialog box instead asking you to choose an application to view the file, you will need follow these steps to install Acrobat Reader and/or configure your web browser.