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Pundit FAQ

Welcome!

Welcome to the Pratt FAQ, hosted at pundit.pratt.duke.edu. If you are new here, you may want to start out by reading the Pratt Wiki Introduction. If you are coming to Duke in Fall of 2027, you may also want to read Recommended Hardware.

We currently have 620 mainspace articles along with several policy and special pages for a total of 6,074 pages. You will join the 4,637 users who have already registered on the site!

View between the two wings of the Fitzpatrick Center

Front entrance to Hudson Hall

Front entrance to Fitzpatrick Center

Front entrance to Teer Building

Third floor of the Atrium in the Fitzpatrick Center

Top entrance to Vinik Building

NEWSFLASHES and ODDITIES

Given that Python is free, MATLAB is available for free to Duke students, and programs like Maple are relatively cheap, students who have their own computer may want to look at How To Get Work Done. The page provides instructions on how to mount your Duke drive to your local machine and run software locally rather than sending programs over the network.

Items of an urgent or transient nature are maintained on the Newsflashes page.

Purpose

This wiki is specifically devoted to asking and answering questions Pratt students may have about computational methods, MATLAB, LaTeX, and other software or hardware tools typically used in engineering classes. As a start, there is an EGR 103 Startup page for students new to Pratt in EGR 103, and a Welcome Back page for returning students who need reminders about available resources and tools.

We also host Pratt-specific information about Student Groups, Recommended Hardware, and related resources. Additionally, courses use pages on this wiki as reference material—these courses appear as categories at the bottom of relevant articles, which are aggregated on category pages such as Category:EGR 103.

Getting Help Working with MediaWiki

This wiki runs on MediaWiki, the platform behind Wikipedia. If you are familiar with wikitext, you are ready to edit. If not, the Wikipedia Help Guides provide walk-throughs for editing, formatting, and talk pages. Wikimedia also maintains a complete reference guide for editors.

Asking Questions

Post questions directly to the discussion tab of any relevant article:

1. Click the Discussion tab at the top of the article.
2. Click Edit source and scroll to the bottom.
3. Add your question using the {{Q}} template, followed by your question and your signature with four tildes (~~~~).

Tagging an entry with {{Q}} automatically categorizes the page into Category:Questions, where community members monitor unresolved questions. See Template:Q for complete examples.

For general or site-wide questions, post directly to the General Questions talk page using the {{Q}} template and your signature.

What Can You Do?

Three primary areas track tasks needing community assistance:

• To Do List: Running updates on wiki-wide maintenance, new templates, and category additions.
• Projects Page: Hub for requesting new topic additions or claiming new reference articles. The Wanted Pages report lists frequently requested dead-end links.
• Open Questions: Review active questions posted by other students. When answering, add the A Template to mark the query resolved.

What Can We Do?

The Community Portal hosts discussions on site architecture and feature development. Visit the portal to propose organizational workflows, such as structural improvements to course FAQs.

Contacts

This site is directed by Dr. Michael Gustafson (DukeEgr93). If you have questions, feedback, or suggestions, reach out via email at `mrg@duke.edu` or leave a message on DukeEgr93's talk page.