• University of South Africa

• PHY 3709

Computational Modelling (PHY3709) Portfolio

Assignment: Please replace this entire title with an

appropriate title of your own (fewer than 20 words) for

the purpose of your portfolio report

A. E. Botha (replace my name with yours and fill in your official unisa e-mail address

below)*

*student-number@somewhere

ABSTRACT

Abstract must be under 100 words and not include subheadings or citations. This abstract contains 98 words. Abstract must

be under 100 words and not include subheadings or citations. Example Abstract. Abstract must be under 100 words and

not include subheadings or citations. Abstract must be under 100 words and not include subheadings or citations. Example

Abstract. Abstract must be under 100 words and not include subheadings or citations. Example Abstract. Abstract must be

under 100 words and not include subheadings or citations. Example Abstract. Abstract must be under 100 words and not

include subheadings or citations.

1 Introduction

Welcome to the portfolio component of the Python computational modelling module. As part of the portfolio you are required

to complete a programming project, the results of which you will describe in a short report, written in LATEX, using the overleaf

typesetting system.

This project will introduce you to doing scientific research, scientific report writing, referencing, and methodology. Since

you will most likely need to conduct research and write research reports at the postgraduate level, all of these skills are

important to develop at undergraduate level, already. As part of this project you will also learn to typeset documents in the

LATEXtypesetting system, which we will access through a platform called Overleaf. Many different types of scientific documents

are typeset in LATEXfor publication as, for instance, journal articles. Thus, familiarization with LATEXis an important aspect of

your development as a potential future researcher. Even if you end up working in the corporate sector, you will most likely still

be required to write reports for your manager, and if your work is about anything scientific, LATEXis still one of the best tools for

this purpose.

This year our project is about Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA), which is a widely used technique for the analysis

of time series data, as introduced by Eckmann et al.1, in the context of nonlinear dynamical systems.

Since RQA has subsequently been used extensively and in many different contexts, you will find a large body of scientific

literature related to it. For the purposes of this report, you need to give a short overview of 3-5 recent (within the last 10 years)

references that have used RQA in one form or another. This will be part of your Introduction.

Note that, for the purposes of your report, you should follow the same referencing style that I am using here. In the

typesetting program LATEX, which is what Overleaf is using, the references are entered in a specific format into a separate file

with a .bib extension. You can look at the .bib file for the template document that you are currently reading, on the overleaf

system. I will introduce you to overleaf a bit later. Overleaf is a free, online website that provides a LATEXinterface, where you

can type in the content of you report and generate a professional looking document similar to the one that you are now reading.

For your report it is mandatory to use the overleaf system with the current document as template. You will simply modify this

template where necessary to create your report and in the process learn valuable skills in typesetting scientific documents.

A bit later I will send you an invitation to join overleaf. Please follow the link in the invitation and create your own account

on overleaf, preferably using your official Unisa e-mail address to create the account. Once you have an account, I will explain

how to set up this template for the purpose of writing your report. But first, before writing your report, you should do some

computational modelling, as I will explain next.