In this repo, we provide resources for new students in cs, math, and stat. These are the resources that we have found helpful for our students, and we hope will help you as well.
To clone this repo:
$ git clone https://<username>@bitbucket.org/tda-at-msu/student-templates.git
When collaborating, we usually commit directly to master and do not go through issuing pull requests. As such, the workflow is typically the following:
$ git pull [[to make sure you're up-to-date]]
$ [[edit]]
$ git status [[make sure the files edited match what you expect!]]
$ git add [[list files to stage]]
$ git commit -m "[[good commit message here, see resources below]]
$ git pull [[just in case someone else snuck in]]
$ git push [[now, you're done!]]
Of course, the words in the brackets are comments and not part of the commands.
For additional resources on git, take a look at:
When working in a group, commit messages are very important. Your collaborators (and even your future self) will be very thankful for well crafted messages. Typically, the messages will start with a verb (with first letter capitalized) in the present tense and will finish the sentence "Pulling this commit will ..." For more on how to write good commit messages, see blogs from:
Academic writing is mastered in one way: practice and learn from your mistakes. The following resources we find helpful:
- Shewchuk's 3 Sins
- Ott's 10 Tips
- Communicating Statistical Results: Written for statisticians, but applicable for all scientific articles.
- Bibtex Cheatsheet
- Pseudocode resources: Pseudocode 1 Pseudocode 2
- Journal Abbreviations lists standard abbreviations for most journals.
- That vs. Which explains when to use the word 'that' versus 'which', and how to properly punctuate both.
- Graphical Abstracts are a great way to give a visual summary of your papers that help readers digest the technical stuff.
Presenting posters at academic conferences is a great way to practice talking about your research. We recommend using Inkscape to create posters, and provide a template in the poster folder.
- Poster Tips: a great resource for knowing what font size to use, etc.
- Inkscape Soup Can Tutorial: this tutorial gives you a jump start on using Inkscape (basically, the free version of illustrator). Some keyboard shortcuts are given.
- Advanced Inkscape
- textext. There is a bug with textext in Mac, see wiki for how to fix.
- Figure Captions in papers: This website is a great resource for how to write a figure caption. If you want a concrete example, take a look at this paper as well.
When naming files (and directories), be sure to follow common practices. Google has nice documentation that explains how to properly name files. Some things to consider:
- Do not use spaces in filenames.
- Make filenames informative, yet concise.
- Use dashes between words in long filenames.
- Each repo should be self-consistent.
Following these guidelines makes it easy for you and your collaborators to find what you need!
- Dey/Wang Book (can start with chapter 2)
- Edelsbrunner/Harer Book: Covers persistent homology, comparison of diagrams, and more.
- Persistent Homology: a Survey - HE, JH: A concise survey of persistent homology.
- What is Persistent Homology - SW: AMS survey article.