Hey, my name is Trevyn and I have just begun the second quarter of my Capstone project this week. I am just a tiny bit anxious going into this new quarter as I am getting accustomed to a set of new classes and preparing for an upcoming trip, but I am otherwise excited for this term. Coming out of the last term I was very stressed over my project and everything that I hadn’t done or wasn’t fully understanding. Luckily, the winter break worked its magic. Over the break, I got a chance to work on parts of the project that weren’t quite where I wanted them and managed to make a decent bit of progress. That combined with a lack of deadlines for other classes dramatically helped me out. Now, I feel like I am going into the new term with a good base of work behind me and a doable amount ahead. Then this development plan assignment I turned in today for the class further cemented this feeling within me by letting me get a sense of how the project will progress over the next ten weeks. During my work over the break, I also stumbled upon a really cool topic that might influence the rest of the classes I take at OSU. These would be algorithms for numerical estimations of problems. Really, my whole project is centered around this idea, but learning about the Gaussian Quadrature has really piqued my interest in these kinds of algorithms. A limit of a Riemann sum might take many thousands of calculations and an adaptive Simpsons quadrature can take a few to a couple thousand, but a Gaussian quadrature can estimate the same integrals in only a few quick calls. I absolutely love it. This goes up there with the Quake III fast inverse square algorithm for me. Anyhow that’s what’s up with me. Ciao!
