Archive for February, 2013

February 19th, 2013

From time to time I find myself having to write or modify windows batch files.  Sometimes it might be better to use PowerShell, VBScript or Python but other times a simple batch script will do fine.  As I’ve been writing these scripts, I’ve kept notes on how to do things for future reference.  Here’s a summary of these notes.  They were written for my own personal use and I put them here for my own convenience but if you find them useful, or have any comments or corrections, that’s great.

These notes were made for Windows 7 and may contain mistakes, please let me know if you spot any.  If you use any of the information here, we agree that its not my fault if you break your Windows installation.  No warranty and all that.

These notes are not meant to be a tutorial.

Comments

Comments in windows batch files start with REM. Some people use :: which is technically a label. Apparently using :: can result in faster script execution (See here and here). I’ve never checked.

REM This is a comment
:: This is a comment too...but different. Might be faster.

If statements

If "%foo%"=="bar" (
REM Do stuff
REM Do more stuff
)
else (
REM Do different stuff
)

Check for existence of file

if exist {insert file name here} (
    rem file exists
) else (
    rem file doesn't exist
)

Or on a single line (if only a single action needs to occur):

if exist {insert file name here} {action}

for example, the following opens notepad for autoexec.bat, if the file exists:

if exist c:\autoexec.bat notepad c:\autoexec.bat

Echoing and piping output
To get a newline in echoed output, chain commands together with &&

echo hello && echo world

gives

hello
world

To pipe output to a file use > or >> The construct 2>&1 ensures that you get both standard output and standard error in your file

REM > Clobbers log.txt, overwriting anything you already have in it
"C:\SomeProgram.exe" > C:\log.txt 2>&1

REM >> concatenates output of SomeProgram.exe to log.txt
"C:\SomeProgram.exe" >> C:\log.txt 2>&1

Environment Variables

set and setx

  • set – sets variable immediately in the current context only.  So, variable will be lost when you close cmd.exe.
  • setx – sets variable permanently but won’t be valid until you start a new context (i.e. open a new cmd.exe)

List all environment variables defined in current session using the set command

set

To check if the environment variable FOO is defined

if defined FOO (
 echo "FOO is defined and is set to %FOO%"
)

To permanently set the system windows environment variable FOO, use setx /m

setx FOO /m "someValue"

To permanently unset the windows environment variable FOO, set it to an empty value

setx FOO ""

A reboot may be necessary. Strictly speaking this does not remove the variable since it will still be in the registry and will still be visible from Control Panel->System->Advanced System Settings->Environment variables. However, the variable will not be listed when you perform a set command and defined FOO will return false.  To remove all trace of the variable, delete it from the registry.

Environment variables in the registry

On Windows 7:

  •  System environment variables are at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment
  •  User environment variables are at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment

If you change environment variables using the registry, you will need to reboot for them to take effect.

Pausing
This command will pause for 10 seconds

TIMEOUT /T 10

Killing an application

This command will kill the notepad.exe window with the title Readme.txt

taskkill /f /im notepad.exe /fi "WINDOWTITLE eq Readme.txt"

Time stamping

The variable %time% expands to the current time which leads you to do something like the following to create time stamps between the execution of commands.

echo %time%
timeout /t 1
echo %time%

This works fine unless your code is in a block (i.e. surrounded by brackets), as it might be if it is part of an if-statement for example:

(
echo %time%
timeout /t 1
echo %time%
)

If you do this, the echoed time will be identical in both cases because the %time% entries get parsed at the beginning of the code block. This is almost certainly not what you want.

Setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
(
echo !time!
timeout /t 1
echo !time!
)

Now we get the type of behaviour we expect.

Where is this script?

Sometimes your script will need to know where it is.  Say test.bat is at C:\Users\mike\Desktop\test.bat and contains the following

set whereAmI=%~dp0

When you run test.bat, the variable whereAmI will contain C:\Users\mike\Desktop\

Details on %dp0 can be found at StackOverflow.

Variable substrings
This came from StackOverflow’s Hidden features of Windows batch files which is a great resource.  They’ve tightened up on what constitutes a ‘valid question’ these days and so great Q+A such as this won’t be appearing there in future.

> set str=0123456789
> echo %str:~0,5%
01234
> echo %str:~-5,5%
56789
> echo %str:~3,-3%
3456
February 15th, 2013

I know it’s a day late but someone just sent me this and I simply had to share so please indulge me.  Solve this inequality to find the love

9x-7i>3(3x-7u)

February 13th, 2013

One of the benefits of working at a university is that you are surrounded by a lot of smart people doing very interesting things and it usually doesn’t take much effort to get them to talk about their research.  I work in the faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences which means that I’m pretty well covered in subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, computer science, materials and earth sciences but I have to go all the way to the other side of campus if I want to learn a little about the life sciences.

Last week, I attended a free event called The Rogue Cell which was arranged by The Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell-Matrix Research and hosted by  The Manchester Museum as part of World Cancer Day.  I had no idea what to expect out of the evening but if you were to press me I would have guessed that there was going to be a lot of power point slides and row upon row of gently dozing delegates.  I could not have been more wrong.

The event was arranged in a workshop format where all of the attendees were split into five groups of six or so.  Each group was then assigned a Wellcome Trust Researcher who’s job it was to explain to us one of five defining characteristics of a cancer cell which were

  • Evading the immune system
  • Angiogenesis (formation of blood vessels)
  • Migration/invasion
  • Proliferation
  • Lack of apoptosis (programmed cell death).

Each group kept their researcher for 20 minutes or so before they got assigned a new one who discussed a different topic from the five.  So, by the end of the evening we had covered the lot.  The presentations were intimate, informal and highly interactive and it felt to me like I was having a good chat down my local pub with a group of people who just happened to be world-class cancer researchers.  If only all learning experiences were like this one!

There was a great cross section of attendees from PhD biology students through to clinicians, undergraduates, random people off the street and, of course, the occasional math software geek.  One of the great things about this event was the fact that everyone seemed to get a lot out of it, no matter what their background.  I asked a lot of questions, many of which would have been blindingly obvious to a student of the life sciences but not once was I made to feel stupid or out of place.  It must have been exhausting for the presenters but I can honestly say that it was one of the most enjoyable learning experiences I’ve had for quite some time.

I sincerely hope that The Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell-Matrix Research and The Manchester Museum will be arranging more events like this in the future.

Links:

The following links were sent to us following the event.  I include them here for anyone who’s interested.

Evasion of Immune System:

Migration/Invasion

Proliferation

Angiogenesis

February 8th, 2013

I was at a seminar yesterday where we were playing with Mathematica and wanted to solve the following equation

1.0609^t == 1.5

You punch this into Mathematica as follows:

Solve[1.0609^t == 1.5]

Mathematica returns the following

During evaluation of In[1]:= Solve::ifun: Inverse functions are being used by Solve, 
so some solutions may not be found; use Reduce for complete solution information. >>

Out[1]= {{t -> 6.85862}}

I have got the solution I expect but Mathematica suggests that I’ll get more information if I use Reduce. So, lets do that.

In[2]:= Reduce[1.0609^t == 1.5, t]
During evaluation of In[2]:= Reduce::ratnz: Reduce was unable to solve the system with inexact 
coefficients. The answer was obtained by solving a corresponding exact system and numericizing the result. >>
Out[20]= C[1] \[Element] Integers && 
  t == -16.9154 (-0.405465 + (0. + 6.28319 I) C[1])

Looks complex and a little complicated! To understand why complex numbers have appeared in the mix you need to know that Mathematica always considers variables to be complex unless you tell it otherwise. So, it has given you the infinite number of complex values of t that would satisfy the original equation. No problem, let’s just tell Mathematica that we are only interested in real values of p.

In[3]:= Reduce[1.0609^t == 1.5, t, Reals]

During evaluation of In[3]:= Reduce::ratnz: Reduce was unable to solve the system with inexact 
coefficients. The answer was obtained by solving a corresponding exact system and numericizing the result. >>

Out[3]= t == 6.85862

Again, I get the solution I expect. However, Mathematica still feels that it is necessary to give me a warning message. Time was ticking on so I posed the question on Mathematica Stack Exchange and we moved on.

http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/19235/why-does-mathematica-struggle-with-solving-this-equation

At the time of writing, the lead answer says that ‘Mathematica is not “struggling” with your equation. The message is simply FYI — to tell you that, for this equation, it prefers to work with exact quantities rather than inexact quantities (reals)’

I’d accept this as an explanation except for one thing; the message say’s that it is UNABLE to solve the equation as I originally posed it and so needs to proceed by solving a corresponding exact system. That implies that it has struggled a great deal, given up and tried something else.

This would come as a surprise to anyone with a calculator who would simply do the following manipulations

1.0609^t == 1.5

Log[1.0609^t] == Log[1.5]

T*Log[1.0609] == Log[1.5]

T= Log[1.5]/Log[1.0609]

Mathematica evalutes this as

T=6.8586187084788275

This appears to solve the equation exactly.  Plug it back into Mathematica (or my calculator) to get

In[4]:= 1.0609^(6.8586187084788275)

Out[4]= 1.5

I had no trouble dealing with inexact quantities, and I didn’t need to ‘solve a corresponding exact system and numericize the result’.  This appears to be a simple problem. So, why does Mathematica bang on about it so much?

Over to MATLAB for a while

Mathematica is complaining that we have asked it to work with inexact quantities.  How could this be? 1.0609, 6.8586187084788275 and 1.5 look pretty exact to me! However, it turns out that as far as the computer is concerned some of these numbers are far from exact.

When you input a number such as 1.0609 into Mathematica, it considers it to be a double precision number and 1.0609 cannot be exactly represented as such.  The closest Mathematica, or indeed any numerical system that uses 64bit IEEE arithmetic, can get is 4777868844677359/4503599627370496 which evaluates to 1.0608999999999999541699935434735380113124847412109375. I wondered if this is why Mathematica was complaining about my problem.

At this point, I switch tools and use MATLAB for a while in order to investigate further.  I do this for no reason other than I know the related functions in MATLAB a little better.  MATLAB’s sym command can give us the rational number that exactly represents what is actually stored in memory (Thanks to Nick Higham for pointing this out to me).

>> sym(1.0609,'f')

ans =
4777868844677359/4503599627370496

We can then evaluate this fraction to whatever precision we like using the vpa command:

>> vpa(sym(1.0609,'f'),100)
ans =
1.0608999999999999541699935434735380113124847412109375

>> vpa(sym(1.5,'f'),100)
ans =
1.5

>> vpa(sym( 6.8586187084788275,'f'),100)
ans =
6.8586187084788274859192824806086719036102294921875

So, 1.5 can be represented exactly in 64bit double precision arithmetic but 1.0609 and 6.8586187075 cannot.  Mathematica is unhappy with this state of affairs and so chooses to solve an exact problem instead.  I guess if I am working in a system that cannot even represent the numbers in my problem (e.g. 1.0609) how can I expect to solve it?

Which Exact Problem?
So, which exact equation might Reduce be choosing to solve?  It could solve the equation that I mean:

(10609/10000)^t == 1500/1000

which does have an exact solution and so Reduce can find it.

(Log[2] - Log[3])/(2*(2*Log[2] + 2*Log[5] - Log[103]))

Evaluating this gives 6.858618708478698:

(Log[2] - Log[3])/(2*(2*Log[2] + 2*Log[5] - Log[103])) // N // FullForm

6.858618708478698`

Alternatively, Mathematica could convert the double precision number 1.0609 to the fraction that exactly represents what’s actually in memory and solve that.

(4777868844677359/4503599627370496)^t == 1500/1000

This also has an exact solution:

(Log[2] - Log[3])/(52*Log[2] - Log[643] - Log[2833] - Log[18251] - Log[143711])

which evaluates to 6.858618708478904:

(Log[2] - Log[3])/(52*Log[2] - Log[643] - Log[2833] - Log[18251] - Log[143711]) // N // FullForm

6.858618708478904`

Let’s take a look at the exact number Reduce is giving:

Quiet@Reduce[1.0609^t == 1.5, t, Reals] // N // FullForm

Equal[t, 6.858618708478698`]

So, it looks like Mathematica is solving the equation I meant to solve and evaluating this solution it at the end.

Summary of solutions
Here I summarize the solutions I’ve found for this problem:

  • 6.8586187084788275 – Pen,Paper+Mathematica for final evaluation.
  • 6.858618708478698 – Mathematica solving the exact problem I mean and evaluating to double precision at the end.
  • 6.858618708478904 – Mathematica solving the exact problem derived from what I really asked it and evaluating at the end.

What I find fun is that my simple minded pen and paper solution seems to satisfy the original equation better than the solutions arrived at by more complicated means.  Using MATLAB’s vpa again I plug in the three solutions above, evaluate to 50 digits and see which one is closest to 1.5:

>> vpa('1.5 - 1.0609^6.8586187084788275',50)
ans =
-0.00000000000000045535780896732093552784442911868195148156712149736
>> vpa('1.5 - 1.0609^6.858618708478698',50)
ans =
0.000000000000011028236861872639054542278886208515813177349441555
>> vpa('1.5 - 1.0609^6.858618708478904',50)
ans =
-0.0000000000000072391029234017787617507985059241243968693347431197

So, ‘my’ solution is better. Of course, this advantage goes away if I evaluate (Log[2] – Log[3])/(2*(2*Log[2] + 2*Log[5] – Log[103])) to 50 decimal places and plug that in.

>> sol=vpa('(log(2) - log(3))/(2*(2*log(2) + 2*log(5) - log(103)))',50)
sol =
6.858618708478822364949699852597847078441119153527
>> vpa(1.5 - 1.0609^sol',50)
ans =
0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000014693679385278593849609206715278070972733319459651
February 6th, 2013

The University of Manchester has uploaded some videos of Cornelius Lanczos the  (re-)discoverer of the fast Fourier transform and singular value decomposition among other things.  Recorded back in 1972, these videos discuss his life and mathematics.  Worth taking a look.

Update: Manchester’s Nick Higham has written a more detailed blog post about these videos – http://nickhigham.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/the-lanczos-tapes/

February 4th, 2013

Welcome to the first Month of Math Software for 2013.  January was a rather lean month in the world of mathematica software I’m afraid but there are a few things worthy of attention.  If you have some news for me for next month’s edition, contact me via the usual channels.

Commerical computer algebra

  • PTC have released a cut-down version of Mathcad Prime called Mathcad Express.  It was actually launched back in October 2012 but I only learned about it this month.  Regular readers of WalkingRandomly will also know about SMath Studio, a freeware application that looks a bit like a clone of Mathcad and runs on many operating systems.
  • Wolfram Research have released Mathematica 9.0.1, a minor upgrade from version 9.  To see what’s new take a look at Wolfram’s quick revision history http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/quick-revision-history.html (Thanks to people in the comments section for this link)

Python

  • Pandas, a data analysis library for Python, saw a minor update to version 0.10.1.  See the pandas ‘What’s new?’ page for more details.
  • Version 5.6 of the Python-based computer algebra system, SAGE, has been released.  See the changelog for details of the new stuff.

C++

  • Blaze is “an open-source, high-performance C++ math library for dense and sparse arithmetic” and it has seen its second release.  Head over to Blaze’s website to grab yourself a copy of version 1.1.

Shiny

  • Shiny wasn’t released in January but this was the first month I heard about it and it looks fantastic.  Brought to my attention by long time WalkingRandomly reader, ‘MySchizoBuddy’, Shiny is brought to us from the creators of RStudio.  In his words ‘It’s similar to Mathematica’s CDF plugin but without the plugin. It allows you to have small R code and visualizations on the web without any plugins http://www.rstudio.com/shiny/’

All your probability distribution are belong to us

TOP