Preface

Ford handed the book to Arthur. “What is it?” asked Arthur. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s a sort of electronic book. It tells you everything you need to know about anything. That’s its job.” Arthur turned it over nervously in his hands. “I like the cover,” he said. “Don’t Panic. It’s the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody’s said to me all day.”

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

 

Welcome to your lab classes (aka as “labs” or “practicals”).1 This online book accompanies the Moodle page for the labs. While it might not tell you everything you need to know about anything, I hope it will tell you everything you need to know about the labs! So, Don’t Panic! There will be a lot to learn, but we firmly believe that you can do it!

How to use this book

First of all, please note that I will use the acronym HHG to refer to the Hitchhiker’s Guide for PSGY1001.

Please also note the menu bar at the top of the HHG. It has a number of useful functions (please try them out!):

The burger icon lets you hide the sidebar.

The search icon allows you to search the book. Use the down and up arrows to jump to the next and previous search result, respectively.

The font icon lets you change the font size, font, and background colour.

The PDF icon allows you to download a PDF version of the book. Please note that our focus will be on the HTML version of the HHG.2 The PDF file will therefore likely have some issues.

The info icon displays information about keyboard shortcuts.

Note the following icons in the table of contents:

A chapter that mainly requires reading. (There might still be a brief quiz or small activity at the end of the chapter.)

A chapter that focuses on an activity.

A chapter that requires both reading and completing activities.

A chapter describing a formative assignment. Formative assignments do not contribute to your overall module mark. The difference to activities is that formative assignments require a formal submission in the “Quizzes and assignments” section on Moodle.

A chapter describing a summative assignment. Summative assignments contribute to your overall module mark.

  1. But not workshops! Workshops are a separate part of PSGY1001 and have their own classes and Workshop Moodle page!↩︎

  2. We hope that by publishing the main module content as HTML pages it will be more easily accessible to vision-impaired students. If you have any suggestions on how to improve the accessibility further, please send me an email.↩︎