You will be required to keep a laboratory notebook for each machine problem. In this notebook, you will keep track of the time you spend on each problem. Please also keep track of interruptions in your work (e.g., someone came over to talk to you, telephone call, stopped to read email, etc.).
The notebook must be in text format (not Word, Excel, etc.). You must keep the notebook as part of the git repository, under the name notebook.txt .
You must commit the notebook along with your work at the end of each work session. If you do not do this, we will assume that your lab notebook is fabricated. Turning in fabricated work, including a fabricated laboratory notebook, is a violation of Academic Honesty standards and will be reported to the Administration.
For each assignment, your notebook should be a table like the following:
Date Who Start Stop Interruptions Question TimeOnTask Comments
3/23 MW,IS 13:02 13:47 10+5 1 30 Analysis of Q1
3/23 MW,IS 13:47 14:19 10 1 22 Data defs for Q1
3/23 MW,IS 14:33 14:48 2 15 Started thinking about Q2
3/23 MW,IS 14:48 15:11 5 1 23 Hmm, I think we misunderstood what Q1 wanted
============committing to git: 3/23 15:15 ===================
3/23 MW,IS,SG 22:03 22:10 2 7 Still puzzling over Q2; discussed it with sanjay.
3/23 MW,IS 22:10 22:22 1 12 regression testing (oops, new version
didn't quite work on previous test cases)
3/23 MW,IS 22:20 23:00 10+5+5 1 20 fixed tests. **Q1 finished**
============committing to git: 3/23 23:00 ===================
3/24 MW,SG 09:30 09:45 1 15 Explained our interp. of Q1 to Sanjay.
//etc.//
Total Time On Task Q1 (minutes) 129
Total Time On Task Q2 (minutes) 720
TOTQ1 (hours and tenths) 2.1
TOTQ2 (hours and tenths) 12.0
The notebook provides a chronological summary of your activities on
this problem set.
Each line should list:
- The date
- The participants. This may be you, your partner, or both. If you consulted with any other person about the problem set YOU MUST LIST THEM ALSO. If you help another student with his or her problem, you should list this activity in your notebook as well. Helping another student for a short period, as you might if you answered a question on the discussion board, is OK. Giving another student code or an important insight is NOT OK.
- The start and stop time of the work session, along with any interruptions. You should start a new line in the work session whenever you change topics.
- Your time on task for the session. Time on task is equal to (Stop - Start) - Interruptions. You need keep track of time only to the nearest 10 or 15 minutes.
- Your notes on the session. Put in as many comments as you find useful. The goal is that you should be able to look at these notes a week or two later, and say "oh, I remember what went wrong on that problem." That way hopefully you'll solve the same problem more quickly if it comes up again. I'm particularly interested in finding out what portions of the problems you found difficult, what are typical bugs and errors, etc., and anything you can do to help me out will be appreciated. You should put similar information in your github commit messages.
At the end of each work session, indicate in the diary when you committed your work to the github repository, and then commit. You need not indicate commits you do during the session.
At the end of the summary, please total up the time spent on each question and report the time in hours and tenths. Make sure that the lines are exactly as shown here:
TOTQ1 (hours and tenths) 2.1 TOTQ2 (hours and tenths) 12.0
where of course you will have one such line for each question on the problem set, and 2.1 and 12.0 will be replaced by the actual time you spent on the problem.
If the Laboratory Notebook is missing or unsatisfactory, you will be penalized.
Last modified: Sun Sep 15 14:16:33 -0400 2013