Using Juliabox with MTH229

Juliabox.com is a web service that host julia sessions for you to use. You only need a gmail account to logon.

Using this service with MTH229 allows you to work on your projects in the lab, on campus, and at home, as the projects are stored in the cloud. This can be really useful, but requires a few steps to get up and running:

Step 1 – go to juliabox.com

When at this screen log on by clicking on "sign in via Google":

Step 2 – set up some external packages.

Next, find the new combobox and open a new notebook Julia 0.4.7.

A new tab will open in the browser with an IJulia notebook. This is where we interact with Julia: we type commands into the cells and Julia will execute the commands and display the output.

Julia uses external packages to add some useful functionality. There are a few that we will use (Plots, Roots, SymPy, ...) but all are installed and loaded by the MTH229 package.

Downloading the files is done with this command:

Pkg.clone("https://github.com/mth229/MTH229.jl")

Copy and paste that into a cell and then "run" the cell by clicking the "play" icon or typing simulataneously shift - enter.

This will lead to a lines being displayed, as Julia does the job of downloading different packages and their dependencies. It takes some time, but we only do this once.

Next, we need to compile the packages, so that they can load faster. The first time we load a package this makes it slow, but the payoff is subsequent uses will be fast. Packages need to be reloaded each time we start a new JuliaBox session.

This is done by running the line

using MTH229

This will take some time. Sadly, it is also like to cause an error. No worries if that happens. Just restart julia and run the command again. (Not the "clone" command though).

Okay, that should do it. We can now use these packages for the rest of the semester. Each time you want to start a new session, enter the using MTH229 command, wait a moment, ignore the warnings, and begin.

Step 3 Copy the project files

Now click on the "Sync" tab.

We can copy the project files all at once through this interface. Under "Git repositories" type:

https://github.com/mth229/229-projects

then click the + icon. It should look like this aftwards:

That's about it.

Step 4 Using a project

Finally, click on the Jupyter tab and then the 229-proj link. This should show 10 projects for you to work on during the semester.

To open a project just click on it. This will open a new browser tab with the project to work on. This screen shot shows the project that opens when the calculator.ipynb link is clicked.

The "Cell" menu shows a "Run all" item. Select this to have every cell in the notebook execute in sequence. This will set up your project for your work.