I usually don’t write a whole of stuff that is related to my area of study. I have a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics and Philosophy. I believe that the root of thought stems from philosophy that’s where all knowledge starts from. We want to know the how and can empirically figure that out, trouble with that we must or should want to know the why. Philosophy provides that quest for you. The sun is there, but why? The sun fuses hydrogen into helium to produce the light and energy we see and use, but why? Hmmm consider that rhetoric.
One of the things that is kind of important if you are a computer science major, I wouldn’t
ever say that a computer scientist has pioneered their way to where they are at with the
experience and understanding. We are lazy people. We don’t like doing repetitive things. We
don’t like doing anything really, its much easy to solve the problem at hand and be done with
it. Problems in computer science are represented mathematically, and from there your task
or challenge is to solve the problem. Did you solve it? Yes. Ok now make it better, make
it faster, make the code easier to read, add unit tests and blah blah blah. There have been
several minds before you that have already took on the task of solving the problem, your job
is to understand what they did and make it better, or learn from the fact the original problem
solver approached the problem wrong.
A problem that is of a big O notation that with a large data set is a problem that takes too long to solve accurately. That problem is known as the traveling salesman. The problem goes like this: you are a salesman (I was at one point) and you have to visit a number of different towns and each town is such and such amount of distance from where you currently are. The goal is to visit all towns and the most effecient manner. Sounds simple, but with a set of nodes (towns) and each needs to be visited, and the paths are weighted, means that the extent of possibilities is n!, which is a HUGE growth function. After 10! the dataset becomes too large too fast and you will not solve the problem in the amount of time you have. Well what does this mean? I visit all the towns and I could have done it better? Yes. This is not really a problem anymore, we have virtualized locations and have the ability to connect without physically being there. That’s all fine and good for people, but the traveling salesman algorithm is not about a salesman at all. Its node traversal. I need to get this packet to all these locations (for whatever reason) and I need to get it there as quickly as I can (because well I must).
Routing algorithms are NP complete, meaning they are solvable. There are a couple of big names that come out with routing for instance Dijkstra’s algorithm. This algorithm is used for finding the shortest path, it is the inverse I think of the A* algorithm that is used in games for AI characters to find the best route to come and get you. On top of that they are guided by a state-machine. Basically the state machine will direct the AI as to what it should do. If you have played any of the Metal Gear games the soldier will patrol until it is alarmed to your presence, and then the chase is on. How does that soldier know how to get your? A* or some other path finding algorithm, A* is pretty easy to understand and you can thread it to make it more effecient.
The challenge becomes this, what is my problem, how do I represent my problem, and then how do I solve it? After that make it better.
Author: admin
Obviously my interests include philosophy. I think thinking and thought are the beginning of every great thing. It’s how we understand and perceive the world. Periodically I’ll change things up and blog about something math or computer science related or even a blog about mythology. I am not political, trendy, or savvy, but I do like a good story. That is why I try and find a movie clip that hints or encompasses what I want to blog about. Sometimes the relevance is there, sometimes it’s a reach and I just really love the movie that I put in the post. The intent and purpose of my blog is to make you think, make me think and together our thoughts can be shared in a collection of material.