diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 94b75659be2..40674f75af0 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+.dropbox
+*.pickle
 *.xlsx
 repos
 
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 7cf8413f921..ec7622eb0af 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -8,12 +8,12 @@
 Download and install Python: <https://www.python.org/downloads/>
 Note: Python 3.5+ is required.
 
-Install packages dicttoxml gitpython lxml networkx numpy openpyxl statistics scipy: <https://packaging.python.org/installing/>
+Install packages dicttoxml gitpython lxml networkx numpy openpyxl statistics scipy matplotlib: <https://packaging.python.org/installing/>
 
 E.g., Ubuntu:
 ```
 sudo apt install -y python3 python3-pip
-sudo -H pip3 install dicttoxml gitpython lxml networkx numpy openpyxl statistics scipy
+sudo -H pip3 install dicttoxml gitpython lxml networkx numpy openpyxl statistics scipy matplotlib
 ```
 
 In order to uset the `--indent-heuristic` option of `git diff`, we require git version >= 2.11. Use the following commands to upgrade:
diff --git a/util/__init__.py b/util/__init__.py
deleted file mode 100644
index e69de29bb2d..00000000000
diff --git a/util/path.py b/util/path.py
deleted file mode 100644
index af46ad38119..00000000000
--- a/util/path.py
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,7 +0,0 @@
-import os
-
-def get_parent_dir(path):
-    return os.path.abspath(os.path.join(path, os.pardir))
-    
-root_path = get_parent_dir(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
-