Reading 08: Document Tools

Readings

This week the readings will focus on LaTeX and gnuplot, which are tools for programmatically generating documents.

The readings for Monday, March 14 are:

1. A simple guide to LaTeX - Step by Step

   You only have to read the Beginners portion. Note, that some of the code from this website may contain errors. For more accurate code examples please see the sample latex file.

2. A collection of Gnuplot examples

   This is a decent blog post on the basics of gnuplot.

Optional Resources

1. WikiBooks

   • LaTeX

   • Gnuplot

2. Using gnuplot to display data in your Web pages

3. LaTeX Templates

4. ShareLaTeX

   Notre Dame has a site license for this website which is a great tool for interactive and collaborate LaTeX document creation. The website also provides great documentation:

   • Creating a document in LaTeX

   • Paragraphs and new lines

   • Bold, italics and underlining

   • Lists

   • Images

   • Tables

Questions

Shell Scripts

In your reading08 folder, write the following shell scripts:

1. roll_dice.sh:

   $ ./roll_dice.sh -h
   usage: roll_dice.sh [-r ROLLS -s sides]
   
       -r ROLLS        Number of rolls of die (default: 10)
       -s SIDES        Number of sides on die (default: 6)
   

   This script simulates random dice rolls using the shuf command:

   $ ./roll_dice.sh
   1
   2
   6
   2
   4
   1
   1
   1
   3
   6
   
   $ ./roll_dice.sh -r 4
   6
   4
   1
   3
   

2. experiment.sh:

   This script uses the roll_dice.sh script to simulate 1000 dice rolls and then uses awk to aggregate the output of dice rolls to produce a tsv output (ie. results.dat) that looks like the following (exact values will be different):

   1       157
   2       178
   3       167
   4       160
   5       164
   6       174
   

GNU Plot

Once you have these two shell scripts, write the following gnuplot script:

1. histogram.plt

   This is a gnuplot script that uses the data from results.dat to produce a histogram (ie. with boxes) called results.png.

LaTeX Report

Once you have these scripts, you are to create a LaTeX report that looks like the following PDF and contains the following:

1. An Overview section describing what you did.

2. A Rolling Dice section describing what you did for the first script.

3. A Experiment section describing what you did for the second script.

4. A Results section that shows the results of your experiment. This section should include a table and a plot generated using gnuplot.

To help you, here is a sample latex file and the resulting sample pdf.

Makefile

Finally, you should include a Makefile that will automatically build the results.png and reading08.pdf by simply typing in make. The Makefile should look something like this:

all:    reading08.pdf

reading08.pdf:  ...
        ...

results.png:    ...
        ...

clean:
      rm -f reading08.pdf results.png

To compile the LaTeX document, you should use pdflatex. Note, you may need to run the command twice to ensure the references are correct.

Feedback

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding the course, please provide your feedback at the end of your response.

Submission

To summarize, you should commit the following files:

1. Makefile

2. roll_dice.sh

3. experiment.sh

4. histogram.plt

5. reading08.tex

To submit your assignment, please commit your work to the reading08 folder in your Assignments Bitbucket repository by the beginning of class on Monday, March 14.