EDCP 442 - Course Reflection

After reading through all my posts throughout the semester, I believe the most important takeaway is that my thought process has become much more abstract. To be completely transparent, before taking this course I simply saw mathematics as just numbers and equations. However, after learning of the history of many of the basic math concepts that I have seen throughout my education and having my eyes opened to the inspirations behind the developments of these concepts and theories I have become more appreciative of these topics. 

For me, the most interesting part about learning the history of math has been the various different perspectives we have seen. From Euclid to the Babylonians, we have seen how people from different cultures or times think about math. How math has been developed through connection to the real world or as an extension to an abstract thought. From this, one conclusion is clear - that there are many ways to understand math and none of those ways are necessarily wrong or right.

To touch on the topic of improving the class - I would say that nothing needs to be changed. There is without a doubt going to be hiccups or bumps in the road in an online learning environment, but I see this as something we can not control. The success of online classes is dependent on the effort that is contributed from not JUST the professor, but also that of the students. I believe that having a blog with weekly posts has been a great way to maintain engagement throughout the semester. It has helped me stay up-to-date with the class and has encouraged my learning. Overall, it has been a pleasure being in this class and if I had to go back in-time to when I chose my classes this semester, I would certainly take this course again. 

Assignment 3 Reflection

After completing Assignment 3, I believe that there are both positive and negative takeaways from the experience.  Personally, the highlight of the assignment was attempting to incorporate the learning strategies that we have used throughout the semester to a topic of our choosing. My group was not only able to learn and research the cold-hard facts of our topic, but also draw takeaways and identify trends from this research. For myself, this has been a large focus in my learning throughout the semester - not just taking the information that we are learning at face-value, but trying to think differently, creatively, or even contrarily to the information to better understand the topic. 

On the flip-side of this conversation, I think it is important to constructively think about things that we could have done better in this assignment. Overall, I believe that my group had done a great job in the research portion of the project - by the end of this process, we all had a strong understanding and good knowledge base on coding and programming languages. However, where I believe we could have done better is in our creativity in expressing and showcasing our learning. We chose to create a roadmap, which we believed would highlight the trends throughout time and further emphasize the learning strategies that I mentioned above. Whereas I believe we met this goal - the trends and takeaways from the raw facts are portrayed, I think we could have flexed our creativity muscle a little bit more. After seeing the various forms that our classmates displayed their projects in, I was thoroughly impressed with the creativity that went into them. In conclusion, I think that our group may have focused a little too much on the research part - trying to learn every detail about our topic, where some of this effort could have been used in thinking more creatively. 

The History of Coding and Algorithms

Our group's roadmap for the History of Coding and Computer Algorithms is below (the link is more useful, but the screenshot is the roadmap in full): 

https://prezi.com/elxw8xbxtwxd/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Explanation: 

The topic that our group decided to research is the history of coding and computer algorithms. What we noticed right away is that the history of programming languages has a couple key trends that we wanted to highlight through our format. Those trends are that, as with every other topic we have learned about throughout the semester, each succeeding programming language is influenced by or improves on a previous language in some way and that the core concept of coding is to make tasks increasingly simple and efficient. Furthermore, unlike many of the typical mathematics concepts, the development of coding has been rapid and is continuing to accelerate.  We also realize that computer programming is a quite recent development with the first programming language being in 1854, but the more significant advancements beginning in 1956 – less than 100 years ago. Given this, in addition to informing through the introduction of how and when each programming language was developed, we also wanted to highlight how quick the evolution has been and show how each language has been a building-block to its successors. Examples of this would be the development of Python, which is a successor to the ABC programming language or C++, which is an extension of the previously introduced C.

We found that these trends become obvious as we explore the progression of programming languages through time and that each advancement is quickly overshadowed or replaced by another. For this reason, we decided to keep the scope of our project very broad and display our findings through a roadmap that walks us through the history of coding. This way, we get to learn how coding has developed and the aforementioned trends will come to light as we move through time - the progression of coding has been swift, languages take ideas from previous ones and each succeeding language strives to become more simple.  We hope that this way, we will be able to cover the high-level important events in the history of coding while also highlighting how each event ties into each other. 

Assignment #3 Outline

Topic: History of Coding and Computer Algorithms 

Format: Roadmap

Reference List/Bibliography: 

Bureau, T. G. (2020, November 5). Ada Lovelace Day: Commemorating the world's first computer programmer. TechGig. https://content.techgig.com/ada-lovelace-day-commemorating-the-worlds-first-computer-programmer/articleshow/78642521.cms

Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. IBM develops FORTRAN. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/technology/computer/IBM-develops-FORTRAN

Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. LISP. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/technology/LISP-computer-language

Hayward, D. (2020, October 7). A Brief History of Coding - BDM Tech Guides. BDM Publications. https://bdmpublications.com/brief-history-coding/

The History of Visual Basic. http://www.johnsmiley.com/visualbasic/vbhistory.htm

History - Open Dylan. https://opendylan.org/history/index.html

How Alan Turing Cracked The Enigma Code. Imperial War Museums. https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-alan-turing-cracked-the-enigma-code

McCracken, H. (2014, April 29). Fifty Years of BASIC, the Language That Made Computers Personal. Time. https://time.com/69316/basic/

McFadden, C. (2020, September 5). The Origin of Algorithms We Use Every Single Day. Interesting Engineering. https://interestingengineering.com/origin-algorithms-use-every-day

Mkhitaryan, A. (2017, October 13). Why Is C# Among The Most Popular Programming Languages in The World? Medium. https://medium.com/sololearn/why-is-c-among-the-most-popular-programming-languages-in-the-world-ccf26824ffcb

Python History - javatpoint. www.javatpoint.com. https://www.javatpoint.com/python-history.

The rise of C++. Nokia Bell Labs. http://www.bell-labs.com/about/history/innovation-stories/rise-c-plus-plus/

Nasar, Audrey A. (2016) "The history of Algorithmic complexity," The Mathematics Enthusiast: Vol. 13: No. 3 , Article 4. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/tme/vol13/iss3/4

Assignment #1 Reflection

In the first assignment, my group was tasked with solving a problem related to Pythagorean Triples and learning the history of the concept. I had been introduced to the idea of Pythagorean Triples in my secondary school mathematics classes, but never really explored too deeply into the concept. What was most interesting to me while completing this project is how sophisticated this idea is. Going back to the 1800s in Mesopotamia, a tablet from that time shows the Babylonian's familiarity with the Pythagorean Triples concept. Noting that there is an infinite number of Pythagorean Triples, I see this as a particularly impressive development.

Through the process of solving the given problem, I found that my group and I took a quite unconventional approach. We took the Pythagorean Triple form: 3n, 4n, 5n or 5n, 12n, 13n...etc. and applied this to the given variable, for example, x = 100. So, if 4n = 100, then, n = 25. Applying this 25 to the rest of the Pythagorean Triple: 3n and 5n, we get 75 and 125, which would equal the remaining two variables y and z, respectively. We were not sure if this was the most efficient way to solve this problem, but we found it to be effective. I'd say we needed to think outside the box and manipulate the concept to arrive at a solution to our problem. Although the concept of Pythagorean Triples is quite simple to understand from a surface level, I found that through this process I built a much better understanding of the theory as we needed to test ourselves by apply a unique perspective to the concept. 

Dancing Euclidean Proofs

First and foremost, watching the video for this blog post was eye-opening to how uncreative my mind works. Being a student in commerce, you don't often get the opportunity to think creatively in the sense that you need to make decisions/perform analyses based on pure logic which has a slim capacity for additional creativity. I would say that out of the reading and the video, this was the biggest takeaway for me - seeing a subject, such as geometry, through a different lens or unique context such as dancing, can open your eyes to how a subject more deeply relates to the real world. 

When I think of geometry, the first thing that comes to mind is the visual aspect of the subject - it is a concept that defines properties such as distance, size, and shape. Before reading this project, I never really thought any further than that. However, with the relation to dancing and the idea of taking geometry off of paper and using a form of art to display the concepts and drawings made me realize how significant geometry is in the real world setting. Although it is such a basic and fundamental subject that we've known since primary school, it has a much more significant impact on our real lives than we might realize. 

A personal example that comes to mind relates to an internship that I had the opportunity to complete last summer. The firm I was working for was designing a large skyscraper and I remember the fundamental importance geometric concepts such as angles, curves, and patterns in the design. Of course at the time, this was something that I overlooked, but thinking back to it, it highlights the importance of geometry in our everyday lives - without it, the building's shape and rigidity would not be possible. Although, this is not an example directly related to body, land, and movement, I believe it emphasizes the connection between geometry and the real-world.

Euclid Poems

Euclid of Alexandria was a Greek Mathematician and was often referred to as the Founder/Father of Geometry. One of his most significant works was a text book called "Euclid's Elements" which contained math developed or originated from himself along with that of other mathematicians. The biggest accomplishment of this textbook is that Euclid was able to present these math findings in a single, coherent framework - making it easy to reference. 

The poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay seems to be touching on the immunity of Euclid's discoveries as being a "sandal set in stone." This seems to be referring the rigidity of Euclid's findings in standing the test of time such as being etched in stone. Millay's poem also seems to focus on the beauty of Euclid's work.  

On the other hand, David Kramer's poem seems to be questioning the perpetuate nature of Euclid's work. As every line is posed as a question, it seems that Kramer is highlighting the importance of being cautious when considering Euclid's findings. Although these mathematical concepts have been around for so long, I believe that Kramer is telling us to never take anything as given and perhaps when the "sandal is removed" we may see a change in how we view the established ideas of math. 

Photo: Euclid's Elements