Category: math

  • Penguicon 2015: Scheduling

    I’ll be at Penguicon this weekend, Michigan’s largest sci-fi/open source convention! I’ll be giving a talk about my upcoming research paper “Scheduling a conference to minimize RSVP conflicts” which is currently undergoing peer review. Here are the slides for my talk: Scheduling: The first academic paper about Penguicon A pre-print of the actual paper: Scheduling a conference to […]

  • Foundations of the golden ratio base

    Positional numeration systems have come to dominate mathematics, with the ubiquitous base-ten number system used nearly universally. In addition to base-ten, other bases such as base-two and base-sixteen have found widespread usage (for example in computer engineering). We review a particularly novel take on the positional numeration system: the golden ratio base, first introduced by […]

  • Convergence of arithmetic and geometric means of the n-th root of a sequence of certain binomial coefficients

    Introduction Blaise Pascal first introduced the triangle that would later come to hold his name [1], although in modern notations the so-called binomial coefficient denoted by $n \choose k$ may be more familiar to the reader. We shall prove a few interesting results regarding a sequence of the $n$-th root of means of the set […]

  • Real number approximations in finite space with IEEE 754

    Jeffrey Quesnelle Computer systems often need to represent real numbers as a part of their operation, but how to encode these numbers in fixed, finite space is non-trivial. If the size of the variable in question is bounded then so-called fixed point arithmetic can be used, treating both sides of the decimal point as integer […]

  • Penguicon 2013 Talk

    Thanks to everyone who came out to my talk “How I Lost 130 Pounds Without Being Miserable” at Penguicon! Here are the slides from the presentation: penguicon_talk_2013.pptx

  • Modeling weight loss with differential equations

    Modeling weight loss with differential equations

    This comes from a talk I’m giving at Penguicon 2012. The talk in general is about weight loss and getting healthy but part of it involves doing some predictive modeling of future weights based on calorie counting. Consider the question “if I eat X number of calories a day, will I gain or lose weight?”. […]