Candid Student Reports

The following (emails) were written by members of the TIP Tapper program during the first day of the second week. Some elements may have been removed for various reasons, but the text that remains is in the student's own words.

 
Today we went over "essential" math really, really 
fast (we were able to right it down), then given a 
series of problems to solve. This is roughly 
esquivalent to giving someone a pointy stick and 
dropping him in the middle of Central Park at mid-
night on a Saturday, but we managed to survive. 
Barely. Tomorrow looks like it'd going to focus on 
matrix math. Happy happy joy joy!


 Matt and Ryan
 

 
Bob1 explained to us about how many digits Excel can 
handle and to how many digits the computer thought 
equaled 0. Today was devoted to math. It was very 
interesting, and a bit difficult when doing 'The 
Look and Feel of Zero.'  

Learning Newton's Method and the other algorithm was 
pretty interesting.


 Kevin & Alexander
 

 
Today was different from the past week in that we 
learned more math than science.  Bob1 talked to us 
in the morning about the kind of approximations 
computers make in calculations and about rounding 
errors, which was new to me.  I never realized 
before how much computers rounded off.  In the 
afternoon, Bob2 told us about Newton's method and 
how to fit data using linear lease squares.  I liked 
learning about the mathematical method, and am 
looking forward to learning about Cramer's method 
tomorrow.


 Madhu
 

 
 I hate fitting data.  I've hated it for the past 2 
years.  Oh well, there's nothin for it.  I have 
never used a spreadsheet before and today was really 
helpful.  Weekends are definatly a drain on energy 
because i'm really tired.  Getting aprehensive about 
the final project, but i'm not usually one to get 
nervous.  I would love to learn details but I have 
realized Bob2 isn't keen on spending time with 
them... oh well.  Guess I'll learn what I can.


 Ben and Bev
 

 
 this morning and most of the afternoon was lecture. 
we learned that the computer is not always accurate.  
We did some pretty neat experiments with what the 
computer considers zero and the rounding errors.  
This is important i guess, but it seemed kind of 
long for just that.  It was interesting to use the 
matrices for plotting a line.  We hadn't ever taken 
that approach before, and it was fun to learn it.


 Liz and Renee
 

 
Today was spent mainly learning about computer error 
in various calculations, derivatives, matrices and 
the least squares method. In the morning I struggled 
to stay awake, partly because I didn't fall asleep 
until 2:30 last night and partly because the lecture 
(by Bob 1) wasn't very interesting. This afternoon, 
we actually got to do some stuff with Excel, which 
was more interesting.


 Harding
 

 
Today was kind of a sleepy day because there wasn't 
a whole lot to do.  The only thing we actually did 
today was a couple of little bitty things on Excel.  
Also, running out of juice boxes didn't help much.  
The lectures were pretty boring, but I guess it was 
all stuff that we'll need to know someday.  The 
frisbee went out in Broad Street a lot, but other 
than that and the lack of juice boxes, there wasn't 
much to remember about today.  We need more Stella 
and more juice boxes!!!


 Natalie
 

 
Today Bob1 taught us about the limitations of 
computers.  We found out that computers, because 
they use binary, have trouble dealing with numbers 
that are very far apart in value.  We also found out 
how to use bisection to find an unknown number. 
After lunch, we learned to use Newton's rule to 
solve a fourth degree equation.  Finally, we leaned 
how to fit a line to data pints with the Linear 
Least Squares method.  That's a lot in one day!


 Eric
 

 
We started the day with Bob 1 teaching us about 
numbers on computers.  Some of it was confusing, but 
I think I got the overall concepts.  Later in the 
day Bob 2 taught us more about spreadsheet, and gave 
us some problems to figure out.  Today was a very 
heavy thinking day.


 Jason