Room for heather and vzn

1:16 AM

@heather "..." means "fill in the blank"

spking of number theory, think the collatz conjecture is a cool problem & have been banging on it off/on for many yrs, lots more in blog, thx for asking :)

Collatz conjecture

The Collatz conjecture is a conjecture in mathematics named after Lothar Collatz, who first proposed it in 1937. The conjecture is also known as the 3n + 1 conjecture, the Ulam conjecture (after Stanisław Ulam), Kakutani's problem (after Shizuo Kakutani), the Thwaites conjecture (after Sir Bryan Thwaites), Hasse's algorithm (after Helmut Hasse), or the Syracuse problem; the sequence of numbers involved is referred to as the hailstone sequence or hailstone numbers (because the values are usually subject to multiple descents and ascents like hailstones in a cloud), or as wondrous numbers. The...

heather

@vzn, yes, I read about some of your work. I wrote a quick program that runs through some numbers doing it, give me a minute and I'll post it

Here it is

I was thinking about the problem, and I was thinking about modular arithmetic, and was wondering if there was a connection that could be made between the two. It just seems similar, though that thought could be absolutely ridiculous.

vzn

@heather glad youre enjoying it :) think this is one of the better free complexity theory books out there esp at intro level see what you think, ch3 is a good intro to complexity theory & has some experimental flavor (which is not common) infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html

yes collatz conjecture has some very important properties wrt mod arithmetic, have found some remarkable ones myself esp mod2 (binary)

heather

And it is free! Wonderful!

Ooh, please elaborate (binary/modular arithmetic)

vzn

have to write up all my CS book refs sometime, this might be close to a good excuse...

there is an interesting concept of "binary density" in collatz iterations, have done many angles of experiments on it...

heather

Yeah, that'd be cool =)

vzn

1:26 AM

what science/ math classes are you taking?

heather

Well, I'm in geometry this year (highschool) and earth science (8th grade science) but I'm also teaching myself a bunch on my own. Oh, and next semester I have a engineering type course.

vzn

sounds good, what kind of engineering? engr in general?

heather

Well, it's specifically called ARAE (Automation, Robotics, Applied Engineering) so it should be pretty cool. The guy who teaches it also does robotics club, but I'm not able to do robotics club because of transportation type constraints.

vzn

nice! have been huge fan of robotics myself, dinking around with lego mindstorms since 1999, and got the latest kit about ~1yr ago for kid over here

have long thought robotics is one of the most fun ways to learn very advanced stuff eg coding/ hardware interfacing etc... large robotics section on my blog

heather

Robotics = awesome =) I have an arduino, mess with that a bit. It's pretty sweet. So I know a little C. But I mainly do Python right now, and I've been doing a few of the Euler problems. I'll keep that in mind. Your blog is like a giant maze of awesome - I keep clicking through like "ooh! Interesting" for long periods of time. It's great. I'll have to look at the robotics section soon.

vzn

1:33 AM

fyi this is another room with a bunch of cs geeks that sometimes has dialogs, itd be great if you could drop by there too sometime

Computer Science

General discussion for cs.stackexchange.com

heather

Oh, what room? I'd love to drop by, though it'd probably be a bit high level for me.

vzn

thx for interest re blog. coming up on 4yr anniversary this mo. =D

heather

Ah, sweet. I'll keep that tab up in my browser and drop by when I have the chance. Congrats!

vzn

thx!

heather

Hmm, lets see.

I had some questions for you.

About various topics.

vzn

1:35 AM

wondering what kind of optical EE stuff your dad has done. did some QM experiments myself yrs ago... have long wanted to do more...

ok

heather

1. If I wanted to learn complexity theory and such things, what prerequisites are there? Math, physics, coding, whatever.

2. If I wanted to do work on problems like the ones we've been talking about, Shor's algorithm, quantum computing, P = NP, Collatz conjecture, and so on, what should I learn? (Sorry, these are kind of broad.)

3. With the Collatz conjecture, is it true/provable that each time a calculation is run (like for 3, the first part with 3(3)+1) it switches between odd and even?

vzn

6

Q: An advice to a self-learner of computational complexity

I'm a mathematics undergraduate student (going to start my third year very soon). I'm trying to teach myself computational complexity. Sadly, there are no courses provided in my university on the topic and there are no specialists on it (In fact, it seems that my university has no specialists in ...

complexity-theory

heather

Actually, that last one is wrong, let me rewrite that (q#3)

vzn

3

Q: Prerequisites of computational complexity theory

what's the prerequisite topics needed for understanding computational complexity theory and analysis of algorithm ...including big-O and Big-theta notations and these staff. I want a mathematical background and good book suggestions for each topic ... thanks

complexity-theory time-complexity space-complexity

13

Q: Self-Study of Computer Science

I am a 16 year old male who has recently been gifted a big encyclopedia on computer science by a friend of mine. I am usually not that interested in computers and technology, but computer science has started to fascinate me. I do however intend to study Physics and/or Mathematics and not CS, so m...

reference-request education

5

Q: How much math does one need to know to understand discrete math/structures for computer science?

Normally universities teach discrete math / discrete structure. My question is, how much math does one need to know to understand this area? Is calculus required or will precalculus do just fine? Does one need to have done proofs before to be able to understand this area? Thank you all for your ...

discrete-mathematics

heather

3. Whenever a number is odd, it will go straight to even afterwards, because odd*odd is odd, and odd+1 is even, right? Would this result then be usable?

(I have to go soon, btw, thank you so much!)

vzn

1:44 AM

there is something have called the "parity sequence" that has semirandom patterns

heather

googling

okay, got to go, see you tomorrow morning

Computer Science

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♦ Room for heather and vzn