Last day of spring classes at Notre Dame

4/29/15

A semester concludes! Spring session classes are over for Notre Dame. Two reading days finish the week off, followed by exams next week.

I'd like to thank each and every one of my students for their hard work and dedication this semester in Introduction to Scientific Computing, ACMS 20210. We learned flowcharting and problem solving methods, and then used the C++ language to apply these new techniques to a variety of math-flavored problems. Together, we implemented the basics of a matrix library, wrote a Tic-Tac-Toe AI, and found prime numbers. I know that everyone struggled at times approaching programming for the first time, and I am very proud of their accomplishments.

We finished off the semester by sharing group projects with the class. Notable highlights include a 2048 AI, a Helicopter game in Qt, Conway's game of life, baseball statistic computers, four Sudoku solvers, a Minesweeper implementation in the console, an Irish verb conjugator, adaptive sampling of a surface in conjunction with Delaunay triangulation, a chess AI, and random rectangular maze generation rendered into the SVG format. WOW!

Thanks, to all my students, for amazing me a second time. I look forward to teaching the class again in the fall.
Even more programming links

4/29/15

Great weekend in Colorado Springs

4/19/15

I had a great weekend in Colorado Springs. Saturday morning and early afternoon was the 100th anniversary of the Rocky Mountain chapter of the MAA's spring meeting. Dan Bates and Eric Hanson organized a session for Numerical Algebraic Geometry, and it was great to have so many wonderful speakers present. Even Justin Marks came down from Maine! I spoke on real tropical geometry again, in a similar talk to the one I gave at the Spring Sectional AMS meeting in Lansing. Brent Davis gave a great talk, too, as did everyone there.

The afternoon, the Bertini2 team met and discussed the design of functions, systems, and homotopies. We learned a lot about the entire program, and made it almost to the level of main(), I felt. Great progress. Now we know what a function is, ha! Thanks to Dan for hosting this weekend, and for everyone who made the trip.
Links for documentation

4/11/15

First Place Science at Notre Dame Research Symposium

4/9/15

I just won first place for science at post-doc level at the 2015 Notre Dame research symposium!

The poster is available in full .pdf form
here.
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