Math 121 - Calculus for Biology I Fall Semester, 2003 Computer Lab Introduction
	© 2001, All Rights Reserved, SDSU & Joseph M. Mahaffy San Diego State University -- This page last updated 03-Sep-03

This page is designed to give you step by step instructions on what to do for your first lab. This is just an outline, and the details of all procedures will be demonstrated in the Lab.

1. Introduce yourself to your lab partner. Exchange email and phone numbers to enable you to contact and meet for completing your lab before next Friday when your lab is due.
2. Log onto the computer. You should have a computer account and password with the login beginning: ma121xxxx (where the xxxx is a letter, then a number from 301 to 399) and some nonsense password. You will change your password to something that you can remember on your first login. Later you can change your password by typing Ctrl-Alt-Del and selecting Change Password. Follow the directions from there.
3. You may want to set up a printer, but the printing facilities are uncertain at the time of this revision. You begin by launching Word from the Start button in the lower left corner, going to Programs, then finding Word. (Later the Word, Excel, and Maple icons will be prominent on your start up computer page.) Again there are some initializations that need to be done. Leave Word open (though you should decrease its size, the square in the upper right corner of the window).
4. Next you can choose your favorite browser. If you choose Explorer, then you will again have a short set up procedure, with which the lab assistant will help. Netscape is usually easier to manage, while Explorer copies better into a Word document. Find my webpage at www.rohan.sdsu.edu/~jmahaffy/courses.html. (I'm not sure if bookmarking will help now.)
5. Go to the Laboratory Main page, then download the files for the cover and summary pages and the Graphing template. In Netscape, it simply asks you if you want to save or open the file, so you select Save it, then proceed to put it on your floppy disk or under the Shazam (H:) directory (which is your safe storage on these computers only accessible by you, but not your partner). With Explorer, you have to right click on the link, then select Save Link As, but otherwise the procedure is similar. You may want to open the cover page now and type information about you and your partner along with your specific Lab Group number.
6. Find your specific Lab from the Main Lab page by scrolling down to the field where you enter the Lab number and your Group number. At this point, I highly recommend that you highlight your Lab, copy it, then paste it into a New Word Document and immediately save it. (You should get into the habit of saving every 5-10 minutes!)
7. Return to the webpage and under Question #1, you should see a hyperlinked graph to grab from the web. Click on this link in Netscape or right click on this hyperlink in Explorer (selecting Save Link as...). Save this file on your floppy disk and/or the Shazam (H:) drive. You can close the webpage for now.
8. This last file should be an Excel file lab1-1-x, where x is a number 1-3. Double click on this file, then follow the directions on the Excel help page to make this into a good looking graph. This is the main part of Question 1 a. Copy and paste this graph onto your main lab document, which you hopefully saved earlier.
9. For Question 1 b, you want to return to your main lab document (hopefully saved as a Word document). Open Equation Editor by going to insert, then object, then selecting Equation Editor. The Word help page on my website has the information on how to create and store this equation on your document.

We now give a few details on how to create the graphs using the Graphing Template that you saved earlier on your Floppy A.

1. Be sure to make a duplicate copy of the Graphing Template and keep the original one unchanged for the future. You do this by right clicking on the Grptp file and selecting copy. Next in the target area (say on the Floppy A next to Grptp) you again right click and select paste. You can rename your file by clicking on the name and typing over a new name.
2. Double click on the copy of the Grptp file to open it in Excel. Erase the old graph and the description on the template.
3. Your problem has an interval of interest, say [-2,5]. The copy of Grptp has firstx= -1, so change it to -2, then change lastx= 1 to 5. You should see all of the first column A changing when you change these numbers with the number in A2 being -2 and the one in A53 being 5.
4. Click on B2. You will see "= A2^2 + 1" appear in the text region of the menu bar. Change this to one of your equations, say the line, with A2 taking the place of x in the formula.
5. Next you want to fill down column B with the new y values. You can do this by highlighting all of column B from B2 to B53. Go to edit, then fill, and finally down. You should see the values change. (An alternate and easier way is to move the cursor to the lower right corner of B2 until it changes shape to a narrow +. Hold the mouse button down at this time and pull down to B53 to fill down the y values.)
6. Repeat this process in C2 for the quadratic, putting the equation in the text area of the menu bar.
7. To create the graph. Highlight columns A, B, and C. Go to the icon for Chart Wizard and select it. Choose the XY-scatter plot and the lower right image showing a graph with lines. Proceed with next, then you should be able to continue add stuff to the graph much as you did in Question #1a to create a good graph.

At the end of your session, you go to the Start button in the lower left corner. Select log off to end your session.