Thanks Wolfram and Debra Woods of U of I for giving me the opportunity to attend the conference! "The main contribution of technology is that it makes us incompetent in an increasing range of things. That incompetency is necessary for the progression of the human race." -Theodore Gray The conference was very exciting and informative; the only complaint I have is that it was too short. Everyone was here to experience and celebrate the universality of Mathematica, and at the meal tables talk usually is centered around comparison of data structures, vague physics formulas, or the release of Mathematica 8. On Thursday, October 22nd, the keynotes announced the new powerful functions of Mathematica 8, which will be released in about 1 year. The probability and statistics engine is being expanded greatly, with the powerful ability to do distribution fitting in addition to distribution creation. Numerical functions like NDSolve and NIntegrate are getting new algorithms, and will be able to handle a whole new class of functions. On the second day, the keynote discussed the future of publishing interactive e-books with Mathematica. Theo Gray arrived late, rushing down the center aisle apologizing for being late. "I swear the conference schedule said the talk was at 9!". Someone in the audience responded "Theo is incompetent at reading numbers. That is why he uses Mathematica." My mom, a physicist, commented that one cannot observe a phenomena without changing it :D. The third day's keynote featured a Wolfram employee's experiences with architecture, where he started off with brick walls that were curved by tilting individual blocks to creating a wall that had a message created by shifted bricks. Then he started working on large-scale projects modeling some modern architecture and then creating his own Möbius strip art gallery that was to be suspended in space. The graphics were stunning, reflecting Mathematica's powerful 3D rendering and universality. But the most amazing part of the conference was the huge variety of talks that were given. My personal favorite was the talk given on Time-Varying Casimir forces, which are created by particle imbalances between 2 parallel plates are brought close to each other. The presenter was very good at explaining a topic that I had completely no prior knowledge in and bringing everyone up to speed. Another interesting talk used Mathematica to come up with a model that will predict how neurons respond to electrical shocks in terms of an action potential. This is cutting-edge research that could improve cochlear implants and possibly restore hearing in deaf people. Also, an excellent talk on epidemiology was given based on modeling treatment plans with resistant strains of influenza on the run. I myself gave a talk on invertibility the SIR model, which is a strong, simple model for tracking infectious diseases, and I had a conversation with Professor Feng of Purdue afterwards. Ms. Abby Brown brought a small group of students from Torey Pines High School in California to showcase her own class based on Mathematica projects. Recently the class received a parallel computing hub consisting of 16 dual core computers, running with a copy of GridMathematica. Needless to say, there was a huge amount of processing power ready to be utilized by Mathematica's parallel computing abilities. The students presentations drew from many fields, including a solution to the shortest distance problem, a model of supply and demand, and a Pokémon damage calculator. These students are very lucky to have such a dedicated teacher along with a school district that has the budget and gives priority to education. My own talk went well, and the experience of talking in front of avid Mathematica users, ranging from industrial professionals to graduate students to professors, was one I won't forget. The audience was very supportive, and I found that the talk itself was enjoyable. The talks I gave are right here. In addition to the talks, conversing with other conference participants was very enlightening. I met an entomologist who used Mathematica to build a organism classifier for his PhD at Harvard. The coding was very intelligent, allowing the user to key in the accuracy rate of the him/her, so the user's answers to the questions aren't taken at full faith. Also, the program would be able to tailor its questions in order to most effectively narrow down the list. The dinner was very fancy, with conference room transformed into a full-out banquet hall with projection screens across the world. The main event, dubbed "The Epic Q and A Session with Stephen Wolfram," was a futile attempt in order to stump the mastermind behind Mathematica. Perhaps the deepest and thought-provoking issue of the conference was posed with the innocuous question "What is the first number that could not be calculated computationally?". Mr. Wolfram spent a full 20 minutes discussing number theory. Also, the fun question "What was the most amusing entry in Wolfram Alpha have you ever encountered?" elicited the response "How are the first 100 digits of Pi doing today?". There was a drawing for a 8 GB IPod Touch, a Wolfram Alpha star model, and a Twix Bar. Had I known that such a drawing existed, I would have signed up in a heartbeat but alas arriving one day late has its repercussions. Conclusion: IMUC was a whole lot of fun in all points of references. Oct. 24, 2009 10:30pm |
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A Few Thoughts |
