Welcome to BEE 4750!

Lecture 01

August 21, 2023

Welcome!

Course Staff

Instructor: Vivek Srikrishnan, 318 Riley-Robb,

TA: Gabriela Ackermann Logan, 319 Riley-Robb,

Important

Please include BEE4750 in your email subject line! This will ensure it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.

Better: Use Ed Discussion and reserve email for matters that are particular urgent and/or require privacy.

Course Overview

Topics

  • Define systems
  • Simulate system dynamics
  • Analyze and assess risk
  • Make decisions with optimization
  • Explore trade-offs across objectives

Example Systems

  • Air pollution
  • Wastewater management
  • Electric power systems
  • Solid waste management

What Do You Hope To Get Out Of This Course?

Poll Everywhere QR Code

Text: VSRIKRISH to 22333

URL: https://pollev.com/vsrikrish

See Results

Course Organization

  1. Introduction to Systems Analysis
  2. Simulating Systems and Risk
  3. Systems Management and Optimization
  4. Analyzing Assumptions
  5. Decision-Making Under Uncertainty

Course Policies

Grades

Assessment % of Grade
Lab Notebooks 20%
Homework Assignments 40%
Final Project 40%

Overall Guidelines

  • Collaboration highly encouraged, but all work must reflect your own understanding
  • Submit PDFs on Gradescope
  • 10% penalty per day late
  • Rubrics will be made available as relevant
  • Always cite external references
  • Curve unlikely (not worth asking about…)

Labs (20%)

  • In-class guided activities, but may need some time after class to complete
  • Focus on “how” to apply methods and concepts from class
  • If you can’t bring a laptop to these classes, you can work with someone else
  • Can work in groups, but must submit your own notebook
  • Due by 9:00pm on the due date.
  • Will drop one.

Homework Assignments (40%)

  • Roughly every other week (5-6 in total?)
  • Focus on new or extended applications and conceptual questions
  • Managed with GitHub Classroom
  • Due by 9:00pm on the due date (usually Friday)
  • Will not drop any of these by default; you have lots of time!

Final Project (40%)

  • Analyze a system of interest
  • Go beyond class examples/methods
  • Work in groups of 2 – 3 for BEE 4750, individually for BEE 5750

Final Project: Deliverables

  • Proposal: one page overview of system and model plan
  • Regulatory Review: 3 page report on relevant regulations
  • Literature Critique (BEE 5750): Analysis of relevant paper.
  • Presentation: Short overview of project (last week of classes)
  • Presentation Peer Review: Review of 2-3.
  • Poster: Overview and results (due end of semester)
  • Group Assessment (BEE 4750): Review of group member contributions.

Attendance

Not required, but students tend to do better when they’re actively engaged in class.

Office Hours

  • Time TBD (will send out poll)
  • Almost impossible to find a time that works for all (or even most); please feel free to make appointments as/if needed.

Accomodations

If you have any access barriers in this class, please seek out any helpful accomodations.

  • Get an SDS letter.
  • If you need an accomodation before you have an official letter, please reach out to me ASAP!

Academic Integrity

Hopefully not a concern…

  • Collaboration is great and is encouraged!
  • Knowing how to find and use helpful resources is a skill we want to develop.
  • Don’t just copy…learn from others and give credit.
  • Submit your own original work.

Academic Integrity

Obviously, just copying down answers from Chegg or ChatGPT and passing them off as your own is not ok.

But often lines aren’t that simple. Let’s quickly consider some scenarios (h/t to Tony Wong for these).

Academic Integrity: Scenario 1

Dan searches the internet for relevant code and copy-pastes it into his Jupyter notebook. They cites the source of the codes.

Is this ok?

Probably Not

  • What portion of the work is Dan’s?
  • How important were the codes?
  • Did Dan understand what they copied?

Academic Integrity: Scenario 1

Dan searches the internet for relevant code and copy-pastes it into his Jupyter notebook. They cites the source of the codes.

What Should Dan Do?

Dan should paraphrase the codes they found to incorporate them with his own code, and then also cite them.

Academic Integrity: Scenario 2

Matthew and Rhonda work together to figure out how to implement the codes, but each works on their own computer and develops their own solutions.

Is this ok?

Definitely!

  • Independent implementations shows understanding.

Academic Integrity: Scenario 3

Felix and Rachel are working together on a problem involving a derivation. Rachel types it up in LaTeX and sends the code to Felix, who pastes it into his Jupyter notebook.

Is this ok?

Likely Not

  • Did Felix contribute enough to the derivation?
  • Definitely not OK if Felix doesn’t give Rachel credit for their contribution.

Academic Integrity: Scenario 4

Darren uses ChatGPT to debug an error in their homework code. They fix the error and credits ChatGPT in his References section.

Is this ok?

Well-meaning, but no!

  • Using ChatGPT (or other ML tools) can be ok, but…
  • Need to ask permission and thoroughly document the query and the exact response.

ChatGPT: The Stochastic Parrot

Why is ChatGPT (and other ML/AI tools) singled out?

  • Stochasticity: Response to a given prompt is not necessarily the same, so need to track what you received.
  • Lack of Transparency: Not clear what the training data is, so documentation is essential (ML is not great at extrapolation).
  • Not Well-Suited to All Tasks: Can be useful for getting a skeleton, starter code, or debugging. Really (and obviously) bad at interpretation and analysis.

Class Tools

Communications

Use Ed Discussion for questions and discussions about class, homework assignments, etc.

  • Try to use public posts so others can benefit from questions and can weigh in.
  • I will make announcements through Ed.

When urgency or privacy is required, email is ok.

Course Website

https://viveks.me/environmental-systems-analysis

  • Central hub for information, schedule, and policies
  • Will add link and some information to Canvas (assignment due dates, etc)

Computing Tools

Systems analysis requires mathematical modeling, and computing allows that to scale.

Julia

In this course, we will use the Julia programming language.

All assignments, labs, and AEs will be provided as Jupyter Notebooks.

What Is Your Programming Experience?

Poll Everywhere QR Code

Text: VSRIKRISH to 22333

URL: https://pollev.com/vsrikrish

See Results

Jupyter Notebooks

We will use Jupyter Notebooks for most computing tasks (including assignments).

  • Allow for interactive evaluation of code and integration with text (including nicely typeset mathematics)
  • Can export to PDF (or HTML -> PDF) for submission to Gradescope.
  • Be careful before submitting: Evaluate all cells in order

GitHub Classroom

Homework assignments and labs will be distributed using GitHub Classroom.

  • Every student will have a unique “repository.”
  • When assignment is released, I will share the link for repository creation on Ed Discussion.
  • Makes it easy to share code for assistance and debugging (share links to repositories, not out-of-context code and screenshots).

Upcoming Schedule

Next Classes

Wednesday: Introduction to Systems Analysis

Friday: Work on Lab 1.

  • Preparation:
    • Lab 1 link is available on Ed. Click it to accept the lab before class.