AS.050.375/675.FA22 Probabilistic Models of the Visual Cortex

This repository contains Python code in the form of interactive Jupyter notebooks that are meant to provide practical demonstrations of theoretical concepts discussed in class. You'll be using this code in your homework assignments!

• If you're new to programming/Python/Jupyter Notebooks, we recommend running the code on Google Colab.
• If you'd prefer to run notebooks locally, we provide Conda environment files (environment.yml) that you can use to generate reproducible environments by running conda create -f <path_to_environment.yml>.

For these homework assigments, most of the code is written for you. The provided utility functions should make it easy for you to solve the assignment: your job will primarily be to evaluate the functions with different parameters and interpret the output. If you have any trouble, start a Canvas discussion, attend office hours, or email us!

Working with notebooks

A notebook contains multiple cells. Each is either a Markdown cell (plain-text documentation) or a code cell (Python, can be executed). The Markdown cells contain information that you should read through. The code cells can be run by pressing the run button on the top-left of each cell or by pressing Ctrl+Enter when in the cell.

1. Sorry, you'll need to create a Google account to use Colab.
2. Download the files in this repository by clicking the green Code button followed by Download ZIP.
3. Extract the files from the ZIP archive using whatever tool your OS provides.
4. Open a Google Colab instance.
5. Navigate to File > Open notebook (or Ctrl+O).
6. On the GitHub tab, enter the URL as raj-magesh/pmvc-fa22 and click the search button.
7. Click on the homework_<N>/<NOTEBOOK>.ipynb link.
8. Click on the Connect/Reconnect button (top-right, next to Editing). This will connect your notebook to a Google server where the code will be run.

To upload ay provided data:

9. Click on the small folder icon on the left pane. This should open a panel on the left with a file browser interface.
10. Right-click on the file browser panel, click New folder, and create a new directory called data.
11. Right-click the data directory and click Upload, then select all the files under homework_<N>/data that you got in Step 2 after extracting the ZIP archive.
12. You are ready to run the notebook!