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 Postgraduate Course: Introduction to scientific programming for MSc in Drug Discovery & Translational Biology (PGBI11039)
Course Outline
| School | School of Biological Sciences | College | College of Science and Engineering |  
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) | Availability | Not available to visiting students |  
| SCQF Credits | 10 | ECTS Credits | 5 |  
 
| Summary | This course will expose the student to the computer programming methods need to write simple software for the types of data handling expected in structure-based drug design. The student will carry out a series of computer-based practical exercises. Supervision will be provided on an introductory basis as well as ad hoc. |  
| Course description | The lectures will try and cover the following areas; however topics covered will be coupled with progress in the practical exercises. 
 - How programming is done
 - Introduction to general concepts
 - Input and Output
 - Using data structures
 - A typical program for the analysis of a protein data bank file
 - Exercises will be in Python/Java
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |  | Co-requisites |  |  
| Prohibited Combinations |  | Other requirements | This course is an introductory programming course and therefore NOT recommended for any students with a programming background. |  
| Additional Costs | Recommended course book(s). |  
Course Delivery Information
|  |  
| Academic year 2018/19, Not available to visiting students (SS1) | Quota:  66 |  | Course Start | Semester 1 |  | Course Start Date | 17/09/2018 |  Timetable | Timetable | 
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) | Total Hours:
100
(
 Lecture Hours 20,
 Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
78 ) |  
| Assessment (Further Info) | Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 % |  
 
| Additional Information (Assessment) | 100% in-course assessment. There will be 6 assessed practical exercises. 
 Practical Exercises
 1.	Modification of simple programs (15%)
 2.	A program to perform a simple mathematical calculation (12%)
 3.	Develop and test extensively a program to reformat text input files (13%)
 4.	Write a program to read and interpret a common chemoinformatics format using an external library (12%)
 5.	Develop a class to read protein databank format files and use it in a simple file reading program (12%)
 6.	A multi session practical to develop and test a program to compute molecular similarity (36%)
 |  
| Feedback | Feedback is in the form of marks given for each section (Functionality of Code, readability, comments in code and documentation) and  some comments about which sections need improvement. |  
| No Exam Information |  
Learning Outcomes 
| On completion of this course, the student will be able to: 
        Describe how computer programmes can be used to carry out simple data selection, data processing and data comparison work.Understand basic python programmingInterpret and summarise the function of Python/JAVA codeCompose simple command line programs in the Python/JAVA languageDiagnose compilation and runtime faults in JAVA code. |  
Reading List 
| Recommended Reading 
 The JAVA language websites:
 http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/index.html
 http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/documentation/index.html
 
 Python 2.7 tutorial
 https://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills | Not entered |  
| Keywords | IntroSciProg |  
Contacts 
| Course organiser | Dr Paul Taylor Tel: (0131 6)50 7058
 Email: p.taylor@ed.ac.uk
 | Course secretary | Ms Louise Robertson Tel: (0131 6)50 5988
 Email: Louise.K.M.Robertson@ed.ac.uk
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