Undergrad on traviscj/blog

500 Million Dollars!

Fri, 27 Oct 2017 12:19:00 +0000

I watched Destin’s $500 Million Dollars video:

and had a few thoughts:

my highschool CS education

My highschool had computer teachers, but no computer science teachers. Luckily, we did have a teacher (Dick Van Kirk!) that was willing to sponsor an independent study of some computer science topics. I read the AP Computer Science A study guides and a bunch of the Java: How to Program (Deitel & Deitel) book and managed to get through the AP test with a top score. This enabled me to skip over the intro CSE142 at University of Washington.

Why Do Math and Izhikevich

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Professor Eric Shea-Brown has written up a nice website explaining what we’re doing with the computational neuroscience modeling. It’s currently on the Why Do Math website at this link: Brain Dynamics: The Mathematics of the Spike.

For my project, we’re starting with a simpler model that is similar in behavior but quicker computationally and (somewhat) easier to analyze mathematically, known as the Izhikevich model(after its creator, Eugene Izhikevich). His website has some amazingly cool videos and a lot of papers on what he’s been doing. His Website

Graduate School Applications

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I am finally getting around to starting my graduate school applications.. and overall having a lot of fun with them. The places I’m applying to are:

University of Washington, Seattle
Northwestern, Evanston
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
University of Colorado, Boulder I’ve got my UW Seattle application about half done, and just starting the other ones.

The UW has apparently gotten my full GRE scores, because they are now reporting them through the unofficial transcript interface. I don’t quite recall where I sent them already.. I’ll probably get that going soon.

Fame and FORTRAN

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I must be getting more popular on some search engines somewhere. I just got six random comment-spam messages. Awesome. I guess that’s why the more important bloggers have come to rely on Bayesian filters and soforth for taming the wild flow of spam. Hopefully that trend doesn’t continue.

Also, it seems as though I am now learning FORTRAN. I’m sortof starting working with Eric Shea-Brown on some Neuroscience research, working with HPC on NSF’s Teragrid. It’s pretty exciting stuff, and I’m really excited about getting moving on it. Anyways, back to FORTRANizing, I suppose.

Getting an AMATH Minor at the University of Washington

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

One of the secret gems at the University of Washington is the minor in applied math option. At least I think it’s somewhat secret. Most of the people I tell about it haven’t really heard of it. But yeah, here’s the deal: You only need to get through calculus and four more classes to get this minor! And a lot of programs require calculus anyways. I’ve taken most of the undergrad AMATH courses, so I figured I’d write something up about which ones I recommend the most.

First Couple of Days in Rio

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

So Monday morning was really lazy. Some people went to get a volleyball, a bunch went down to the beach again, and I let my sunburn cool off. It was also really warm and sunny, which is a nice change from Seattle! We left for IMPA around 2, got on taxis to get over there, and eventually made it. The taxi drivers are apparently pretty vicious. We took 5 cabs, 3 got charged around 15, one around 20, and one 25. So they try to rip you off.

Whack it with an X squared!

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

David and I were working on our Math381 model, and I was getting frustrated because the data we collected and the results from the simulation were not lining up properly, which was quite frustrating. We were hoping to see something like this:

Number of Logins from Data

Instead, we were getting stuff distributed like this:

Simulated Number of Logins

I realized that we needed some function to force a bunch of this junk further left. Recalling an old adage from Mr. Cone’s AP Chemistry class, I decided it was the right time to whack it with an X squared. This is vaguely appropriate, because rand() has a range [0,1), so squaring it should put a whole bunch of stuff further right, but not everything(ie, the first half will end up in the first quarter, the first 3/4 will end up in the first 9/16, etc). Imagine my shock when I saw this:

Dijkstra's Algorithm Paper

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The week before my sister’s wedding, I was tasked with writing a paper on Dijkstra’s Algorithm for my Discrete Mathematical Modeling class. I think I might have missed the mark a little bit, but I had so much fun writing it that I’m posting it here.

I’m almost considering writing some more stuff in this style… anything anyone would like to see written about?

Here’s a link: Dijkstra’s Algorithm

Odegaard Copy Center

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:00:00 +0000

This is going to be sortof a short post with not much worldwide applicability, but I just learned a couple of weeks ago that Odegaard’s Copy Center will bind a packet of papers for fairly cheap, it turns out. They do it with a clear front cover and a back cover of your choice, plus binding you pick out from their samples. They do it while you wait and have good hours. I had no idea they offered this service, and was very impressed with their output.

Differential Equations

Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve realized that a lot of people are nervous about differential equations. Which is understandable, but in general there’s some pretty straightforward ways to solve a fair number of the ones you come across. I’d really like to write some of it up.

My basic idea is going to be, show a bit about integrating factors, a bit about separation of variables, the characteristic equation, and the method of undetermined coefficients. That covers a lot of physical territory. Then some about reducing order with transformations from n-th order equations to n 1-st order equations, and basic Laplace for a sortof general method. And finally, maybe a tiny bit about numeric methods.

Cython

Fri, 09 May 2008 12:00:00 +0000

After I had finally convinced myself to get out of bed this morning to go to my ACMS seminar, I quickly checked my email and my heart sank a little. Today’s talk was on SAGE. Don’t have anything against SAGE, but I thought it was just a big pile of open source packages in a big, heavy install. Sorta cool, but worthless, in other words.

Turns out, I was pretty wrong about that. It is that, but it’s also 70k new lines of code that does a whole bunch of exciting stuff. Near the end of his talk, William Stein mentioned that they had created a new tool called Cython. (Well, extended Pyrex, but… whatever.)

Introducing... me

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Or not. Ok, so… Every previous blog attempt has been a pile of crap. Well, therealtravisjohnson wasn’t always, but it kinda got stale. So, I’m not gonna bother talking about me until I have a substantial amount of posts.

I got owned on my math quiz today. It’s kinda ridiculous that we have a 60 minute quiz after 3 hours of lecture, I feel. Thank god I’ve largely gotten over the not studying well phase.

Where I'm At

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

So it’s almost the end of Winter Quarter 07 at the University of Washington. It’s cold and rainy and lame. Last week I got turned down from the Computer Science program here, which meant I spent the weekend generally freaking out.

In any case, I then remembered that I liked the idea of an ACMS degree. The base of the major consists of the physics series, a Numerical Methods course and a Continuous modeling course from the AMATH department, and discrete models and statistics from the math department.