2017 is the year of Groups St Andrews 2017 in Birmingham. This conference is organised by the University of St Andrews and the University of Birmingham. It will take place in Birmingham between Saturday 5th August (arrival day) and Sunday 13th August 2017 (departure day). The talks will happen from 6th August until 12th August 2017 (inclusive).
Immediately after that conference, CoDiMa project will run a satellite hands-on tutorial on the computational algebra system GAP. Instructors will be Olexandr Konovalov and Markus Pfeiffer (University of St Andrews). We will start it at 11am on Sunday August 13th and finish it shortly after lunch on Monday August 14th to allow for return journeys.
The tutorial will take place in the Lecture Room B in Watson Building (see travel directions here). It will start with the Software Carpentry lesson “Programming with GAP” on Day 1, and will be followed by further sessions on avoiding common pitfalls while programming group-theoretical algorithms, debugging and profiling, and other aspects of programming in GAP on Day 2. We would like to learn about your current or intended use of GAP and hear some feedback at the end of Day 1, and will try to adapt the plan for Day 2 dependently on the aspects of GAP you are most interested in. You may leave notes and ask questions in this Framapad which we will use for communication during the tutorial (you can switch the language to English using the menu which appears after a click on the Framapad settings button).
Since most of the tutorial will be in the form of live coding, it is strongly recommended to bring with you a laptop with the working installation of the latest GAP release (GAP 4.8.7). For installation instructions for Windows, OS X and Linux please see this page. If you need any help with installing GAP, please contact Markus Pfeiffer at Groups St Andrews 2017 in Birmingham conference, or Olexandr Konovalov by email.
Sunday August 13th
- 10.30 Arrivals, coffee
- 11.00 – 11.30 Introductions and getting started
- 11.30 – 13.00 Tutorial
- 13.00 – 14.00 Lunch
- 14.00 – 15.30 Tutorial
- 15.30 – 16.00 Coffee
- 16.00 – 17.30 Tutorial
- 17.30 – 18.00 Wrapping up
Monday August 14th
- 9.00 – 9.30 Arrivals, coffee
- 9.30 – 11.00 Tutorial
- 11.00 – 11.30 Coffee
- 11.30 – 13.00 Tutorial
- 13.00 – 14.00 Lunch
- 14.00 – 15.00 Wrapping up
To register, proceed to the University of Birmingham Online Shop. The registration is independent of registration for Groups St Andrews 2017 in Birmingham. You will be able to specify individually each night on which you will need accommodation for the days of the tutorial, or register without booking accommodation. Please note that the deadline for booking on campus accommodation at discounted price is July 25th. After that date accommodation will be offered at a standard price and only subject to availability.
Lunches and refreshments will be provided during the tutorial. If you need to find a place for the dinner, please see some suggestions from the organisers of Groups St Andrews 2017 in Birmingham.
Limited financial support to cover travel expenses and accommodation in Birmingham during the GAP tutorial is available to PhD students from UK Universities who will attend both days of the tutorial (Sunday-Monday). Students wishing to apply for the support should register online, and then ask their PhD supervisor to email to the organisers a recommendation that they should take part.
Please note that this is not a Software Carpentry workshop, so it will not cover topics such as Unix shell and version control with Git which are standard parts of the Software Carpentry curriculum. If you’re interested in these topics, in addition to the GAP tutorial we recommend you to attend one of the Software Carpentry workshops, which you can find on this page.