This week in class, I had a presentation about how Computer Engineers use some of the mathematical concepts that the class studied in last couple of weeks. We started out by establishing the different aspects of Computer Science and Engineering, and how it fits in to the different things that we do everyday. I tried to introduce the various branches of CSE, and gave examples from hardware, software, artificial intelligence and theoretical computer science. I then talked about two specific projects/applications in CSE.
I have noticed that most of the students in the class know and use facebook. So, I thought it would be cool to talk about a service like facebook and what goes on behind the scenes to make it available. I encouraged students to think about the millions of people on there, the billions of connections between them, billions of pictures etc, and think about how that is all managed. It is a lot of data and analysis! I started out by showing them a snippet of what some of the code for a service like facebook might look like, and explained how it takes a series of computer level instructions to get things done. At the heart of these programs is Mathematics. From logical expressions, to sorting, searching and any kind of operation you would care about has math in its background. We saw an example of that in the snippet. I also told them the similar trend in any software application they have ever used. We finished that section by talking about the fact that at the very low level, computers understand only 0's and 1's, and every program has to be converted to these binary numbers, which I believe they will be studying soon.
I then told them a little bit about the study of artificial intelligence. They were particularly interested in the story about Deep Blue, the chess playing program from IBM research that beat Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion in 1997. We also talked about robotics, and how mathematics is used to model different aspects of robot motion, force, control etc. All in all, the students seemed to be interested in the material, and paid attention during the presentation.
In the regular class material, we are now covering powers and exponents in Algebra, They are learning about simplifying expressions with exponents and graphing exponential functions. In geometry, we are moving onwards to studying triangles. With the passing of the semester, students are getting familiar with geometric concepts and having an easier time solving problems in the field.
Azarias
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Just this past August was the first match in which a computer (MoGo, running on 800 dual-core processors) beat a professional player at a game of Go! It was once thought that humans would never be surpassed by computers at Go. MoGo had a 9-stone handicap, but it was still monumental.
yes sir teaching is all about arousing the curiosity of the students and I think you managed that very well.
Do you know that Deep Blue was built by computer scientists and one Chess International Master. And that combination beat the reigning chess world champion. Often people say that a computer is only as good as the people who program it. In this case the computer scientists and the Chess IM together or individually would have been no match for Kasparov without deep blue on their side.
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