It
was a day of programming here at CHPC. The day started with a video
session about Google’s effort in making autonomous cars. It was even
better than the attempt made by Stanford University. The car used was
Toyota Prius (Well, identifying the vehicle is important for me :-D).
The major difference of it from that of Stanford’s was that it could
manage high speeds with no errors in handling. Now that is really
important if autonomous vehicles are to get public acceptation.
Overall, it was one of the best videos so far.
Then, we came back to algorithms. We found the square root of a number using the iteration algorithm, bisection algorithm and Newton-Raphson algorithm and then programmed it in Octave. We also analyzed the efficiency of the algorithms and found the Newton-Raphson algorithm to be the most efficient among the three, using considerably lower steps.
We were introduced to the various commands in Octave. Using of functions in Octave was familiarised. We did a lot of programs on matrices. Octave supports scalar operations on matrices that can be used with the help of ‘.’ (for eg: ‘<matrixname>.*2’ is used for scalar multiplication of a matrix by 2). Another important point to be noted was that we have to try to use built-in functions of Octave to improve efficiency. For example, finding square root of every element of a matrix can be done more efficiently by using ‘<matrixname>.^(1/2)’ than by a function to find square root of every element using Newton-Raphson algorithm. It is because the in-built function does parallel processing.
During the afternoon session, we looked into image manipulation. Every pixel of an image has a R value, a G value and a B value. So each pixel is represented by it’s RGB value. So an image can be represented as a 3-dimensional matrix. We can manipulate an image by varying the RGB values.
Then, we had another video session during which we were shown a video titled ‘My Brilliant Brain’ taken by NatGeo. It was about the female chess grandmaster named Susan Polgar. Not only could she win matches, but she could do it at an unbelievable speed. The video analyzed how she could do it. Her father believed that “genius was not born, but made”(Interesting) and her achievements prove her father’s theory. The training she received was so good that her brain could remember previous chess board situations she encountered as if they were human faces and proceed with the best move, from past experiences, within a second. Really amazing!
The day ended with the blogging session. We also had to send an interesting topic to Ajay, who collected this from every CHPC member. The article I send was about Google Go.
Then, we came back to algorithms. We found the square root of a number using the iteration algorithm, bisection algorithm and Newton-Raphson algorithm and then programmed it in Octave. We also analyzed the efficiency of the algorithms and found the Newton-Raphson algorithm to be the most efficient among the three, using considerably lower steps.
We were introduced to the various commands in Octave. Using of functions in Octave was familiarised. We did a lot of programs on matrices. Octave supports scalar operations on matrices that can be used with the help of ‘.’ (for eg: ‘<matrixname>.*2’ is used for scalar multiplication of a matrix by 2). Another important point to be noted was that we have to try to use built-in functions of Octave to improve efficiency. For example, finding square root of every element of a matrix can be done more efficiently by using ‘<matrixname>.^(1/2)’ than by a function to find square root of every element using Newton-Raphson algorithm. It is because the in-built function does parallel processing.
During the afternoon session, we looked into image manipulation. Every pixel of an image has a R value, a G value and a B value. So each pixel is represented by it’s RGB value. So an image can be represented as a 3-dimensional matrix. We can manipulate an image by varying the RGB values.
Then, we had another video session during which we were shown a video titled ‘My Brilliant Brain’ taken by NatGeo. It was about the female chess grandmaster named Susan Polgar. Not only could she win matches, but she could do it at an unbelievable speed. The video analyzed how she could do it. Her father believed that “genius was not born, but made”(Interesting) and her achievements prove her father’s theory. The training she received was so good that her brain could remember previous chess board situations she encountered as if they were human faces and proceed with the best move, from past experiences, within a second. Really amazing!
The day ended with the blogging session. We also had to send an interesting topic to Ajay, who collected this from every CHPC member. The article I send was about Google Go.
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