# About this Project: Who is it for & How To Use it

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<sub class="aside">***Acknowledgement**: This project came about as the result of the support from an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA) named "Reducing Barriers to Computational Neuroscience" in collaboration with Professor [Matt Nassar](https://vivo.brown.edu/display/mnassar) at Brown University's neuroscience department during summer 2022.*</sub>

**Computation** plays a big role in today's neuroscience research. From modeling high-level behavior to data analysis to low-level theories of neural networks, knowledge of computation helps at many levels. It is therefore convenient to have command of computation & programming for aspiring neuroscientists, and really in everyday life as well.

### Who will find these notes useful
These notes were intended for newcomers to the field of computational neuroscience who do not have much programming experience. The goals of these notes then is for a **complete beginner** to programming be able to get started on simple projects of their own after reading through. Though the field of computation is huge, and these notes can only hope to cover elementary concepts and examples, it really is the process of high-level, abstract thinking about programming that we would like to emphasize here -- so that you will be prepared for picking up new things in the future.

*So, as you work through the programming examples later in the notes, make sure to not only take note of the details but also how they fit into the bigger picture that we will present!*

### How to Use these Notes
The notes are meant to be read in order -- we will first present the big ideas of programming and computing, demystify the workings of a computer, and then delve into the specific context of MATLAB programming, where we can see how some of these big ideas manifest themselves in our code.

It is important to attempt most if not all the problems we ask and exercises we give -- an active component is essential to fully absorbing the content. Even then, it might still take more actual practice in real projects for these concepts to sink in.

<sub class="aside">***Disclaimer**: These notes by no means try to cover comprehensively what would be typically taught in an introductory computer science course. These notes were written with computational neuroscience in mind ultimately -- not, say, software development or theoretical computer science.*</sub>