Mathematics and Computer Science

As a kid, mathematics never interested me that much, it was just something I would do for school. But I did get into programming when my uncle introduced it to me. As I programmed though, I started to see the close relationship between programming and mathematics. Mathematics gave me a structure to know how to solve different computational problems. Then as the first helped lift the second, the second helped lift the first. I started to use my computational problem solving to understand more into how to solve mathematical problems.

Then my senior year of high school, I was put into a Calculus class with a teacher that was enthusiastic about mathematics. Her enthusiasm spread to me and I fell in love with mathematics. So much so that I decided to make my major in college Applied Mathematics. During work, when no customers were around, I would pull out my ruler, protractor, pen, and calculator and do my own math every chance that I got. That was all fine and dandy until I went on a church mission. Afterword’s, I realized that my love of programming had never gone away, and my math ability diminished. I then decided to go towards a computer science degree.

One thing I would love to do is work on simulation in the computer science industry. The application of logic and mathematics in a computer software solution to figure out what’s happening in the real world is cool to me. For example, here is a great video I love that talks about the movie Frozen, and the mathematics behind it to simulate the snow in the movie.

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There have been projects that I’ve wanted to delve into that involved more advanced mathematics. Early in the semester I became interested in artificial neural networks. I researched it and researched it. I took notes and tried to understand fundamentally what was happening behind the scenes. Then, when I got into back propagation (the algorithm to determine how to change the weights of the neurons based on the result of the previous trial) I realized that my mathematics level had been reached. I did not understand how it worked. For now I am waiting until Calculus 2. I then should know how to design a working artificial network. The book “9 Algorithms That Changed the Future” puts my concerns on the table

“The details of how to calculate these tiny adjustments to the dials are actually rather important, but they require some math that is beyond the scope of this book. The tool we need is multivariable calculus, which is typically taught as a mid-level college math course. Yes, math is important! Also note that the approach described here which experts call “stochastic gradient descent” is just one of many accepted methods for training neural networks.”2

Even though my skills in Mathematics aren’t what they used to be, I still am subscribed to Numberphile on Youtube. They introduce new math problems and keep my interest going in them. A great number of their videos are very applicable to computer science and the real world. Mathematics is one of those branches like computer science that have a foot in the door of every other field of science out there.

One of these branches is computer security. I actually did not have any interest not too long ago in computer security. To quote from the movie Incredibles, I felt like he did

“No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. Sometimes I just want it to stay saved! You know, for a little bit? I feel like the maid; I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for... for ten minutes!”3

I felt like it was just a cleanup job. But learning about Public key cryptography recently, I was intrigued how the use of prime numbers could be the key to sending secret messages with anyone listening. A code of sorts. Before I had the opinion that “9 Algorithms” had “If you want to tell a secret to your friend, you can just whisper in your friend’s ear. It’s not so easy for computers to do that. There’s no way for one computer to “whisper” a credit card number to another computer. If the computers are connected by the internet, they have no control over where that credit card number goes, and which other computers get to find it out. ”2 Then luckily the book goes on to explain the ingenious system that was developed to get around that problem.

I’ll talk to you guys next time. Math is awesome! Computers are awesome! Computational mathematics is the best!



Bibliography

1. UXPlus. "Disney's Frozen A Material Point Method For Snow Simulation." YouTube. YouTube, 26 Jan. 2014. Web. 14 Nov. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0kyDKu8K-k>.

2. MacCormick, John. "Pattern Recognition." Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today's Computers. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2012. 38, 100. Print.

3. "Quotes." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2016. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317705/quotes>.