[mark_l_watson]

The last few weeks I have been reading the first few chapters of the optional text book to get ready for the class - it all looks good, except that the programming assignments are done in Matlab or Octave. I read over the first assignment, and it will be a stretch to "love" Octave.

The course material looks awesome.

[forkandwait]

Re Matlab/ Octave:

I am an R to Octave convert. R has some great stuff, especially multi-type tables and a decent OO system for packaging complex analyses, but .... Octave rocks R when you have to come up with complex matrix oriented algorithms -- much, much more straightforward.

Also -- cell arrays are funky and necessary for string manipulation. I suggest not dwelling on their weirdness -- you may grow to like them.

[mark_l_watson]

Thanks for the encouragement. I have spent a few hours learning Octave this afternoon, and indeed the matrix operation support is nice.