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BLog 8

As I am still studying computer science I am still not sure what career I am aiming for. It is still my first semester and I really chose this field off of interest and not because I had my life planned ahead of me. Although I have done a little research of what most computer science majors go into using rasmussen.edu (http://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/technology/blog/what-can-you-do-with-computer-science-degree/). This site showed some of the different careers that people go into with their computer science degrees, and their salaries. When looking at the different options that were presented to me on this blog I took a little bit of interest in Software Application Developers. According to this site their job consist of “Designing and customizing computer software… Modifying existing software to optimize efficiency or correct errors… Evaluate software requirements”. This job comes out to a median salary of about 95,500, which in my eyes is good. For me I try not to look too far into the future when it comes to thinking about careers and such. This is mainly because I always feel like anything can change. I might not even be interested in the same field next semester, so I try and take things a step at a time and try to pave the way as I continue though college. If there was one topic I would have wanted to learn more about during this semester of computer science it would be video games, well that and robotics so I have a tie. I am a big gamer kid and knowing that the field I study and video games have correlation I got a little nerdy about it. If I could learn more about how to apply  his field into games and come up with some of my own I would have really enjoyed that. Playing games is just something I have been doing for a long time and it contributes to 70% of my “wasted” time that I could be doing something productive. But If I could have study or have a career where I could do something that I enjoy and could probably do non stop that would be amazing. But on the other hand I really liked learning about robotics. I didn’t really know too much about it coming into to the class but the more we talked about it the more interesting it got. Really just looking at how much the world as advanced and came up in technology amazes me. Knowing that most manual labors and task that would normally be difficult are being either completely done by computers or the amount  of stress and hard work required is reduced. Then robotics are being programed by  the same people who are going to school for computer science. Knowing that also reassures me that I am in a pretty good field knowing that world is basically starting to revolve around technology, so there should always be an opening for someone with a computer science degree because it is doing nothing but expanding. For this next semester I am really looking forward to the programing class. I hope that this class shows me if I should be in this field or not. Also I hope that it helps me get closer to learning more about how I can apply this field into something that I enjoy, like games. I honestly hope I stay in computer science all throughout college. It is an amazing field form what I have seen and learned so far. I know that nothing is really guaranteed in life but I hope this is one of the things that sticks and I become really successful in

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Blog 7

Reading this book I felt not as interested as I normally would be. Normally when it comes to books that have something to do with whatever I am interested in I lock right into the book. This book was a little different and I had a harder time doing that. Although algorithms have always had my interest with how it simplified processes, this book made it almost seem more complicating then when I first thought I understood some algorithms. I tried re-reading sections of the book, it continued to challenge me to keep interest in this book. With that being said I had no “most interesting” part to this book because I did not enjoy the book. It is hard to come up with an interesting part of something I basically completely disliked.  Overall how I felt about this book is pretty bad. As I continued through this book I continued to question weather or not this was the right field for me. As I understand that this is a difficult field, I had a somewhat of a good understanding in it. After reading this it felt that their or more complicated things to learn similar to this knowing that this is only an intro class I questioned. The chapter I disliked the most was chapter five. Chapter five dealt with the “Error-Correcting Codes”. The only reason I disliked this section was because it was difficult for me to completely grasp. I remember sitting in on one of the lectures that discussed this topic, and  I still had a hard time learning it during the lecture as we practiced on paper. I am pretty sure if I took more time to personally try and learn this subject I would have a better understanding of how exactly this works. This book made learning algorithms harder than it originally was. Another thing that I don’t like about this book is that it just didn’t make me want to read it at all. For some reason this book didn’t seem interesting to me at all. The wording that the author uses in this book is extremely technical. That’s the reason I couldn’t really get into this book. While I was reading it, I had to re-read some of the stuff that were on the pages. As I kept on reading it, I just felt discouraged. Compared to the other books I read during this semester in the intro class I felt more locked in and interested in what I was reading. Like in the book “ The Pattern on The the Stone”  I could understand concepts easier and the examples of the concepts were better explained in that book compared this the one now. The book was overall a difficult read for me and I will have to go find better understanding of algorithms from another source. Although this is my personal opinion on it I would still recommend this book to other people because different people have different understandings of things. What this book being difficult and hard for me to completely understand and grasp. Someone else it could be simple and help them out a lot more than what this book as done for me. This book is still has its significance of being a book to help better understanding algorithms and further your education on computer science. Although I was not as fortunate with this book as others it could most possibly be a good book for the subject, just not a good book for me which is why I disliked it.

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blog 6

When it comes to computer science and math. They are very related. Math is a pretty much a core aspect when it comes to computer science. When it comes to math there are many different concepts. Kind of like computer science with all the algorithms. But when looking at a math concept my favorite math concept would have to be the Golden Ratio concept. A little back ground of the Golden Ratio math concept is that is a number found by dividing lines. You get the Golden Ratio by dividing a line into two parts, so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is equal to the whole length divided by the longer part of the line. The golden ratio is also called the golden mean or golden section. Other names include extreme and mean ratio,medial section, divine proportion, divine section, golden proportion, golden cut,and golden number. Some twentieth-century artists and architects, including Le Corbusier and Dalí, have proportioned their works to approximate the golden ratio especially in the form of the golden rectangle, in which the ratio of the longer side to the shorter is the golden ratio believing this proportion to be aesthetically pleasing. The golden ratio appears in some patterns in nature, including the spiral arrangement of leaves and other plant parts. Mathematicians since Euclid have studied the properties of the golden ratio, including its appearance in the dimensions of a regular pentagon and in a golden rectangle, which may be cut into a square and a smaller rectangle with the same aspect ratio. The golden ratio has also been used to analyze the proportions of natural objects as well as man-made systems such as financial markets, in some cases based on dubious fits to data. As described the golden ratio is applied in multiple ways. When looking at how computer science and the golden ratio can be related, it could be a lot of things. When looking at all the different kinds of algorithms they all of some sort of math involved in them. An algorithm is a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations according to the definition. So with the Golden ration being a type of calculation it fits right in the description. So you could use this for an algorithm in computer science when it comes to trying to create a simpler process for a program that you created. When it comes to computer science algorithms are always interesting to look at. Looking at how algorithms always improve and watching the process simplify each time always keep my interest. Looking more at algorithms and how some of the math I learned is applied to my field of study is kind of a crazy feeling sometimes. Every time I have learned something complicated in a math class I always complained about how it has nothing to do with real world situations, and that I would most likely not be using it in my career. But now that I’m in college and studying computer science I understand how it is applied and why it is necessary to know those complicated formulas. In a article on top coder “iblackstorm” discusses  the importance of algorithms and how many complex algorithms people go though in their daily life’s.” ‘an algorithm is any well-defined computational procedure that takes some value, or set of values, as input and produces some value, or set of values as output.’ In other words, algorithms are like road maps for accomplishing a given, well-defined task.” This going back to my earlier description of algorithms and how important they can be.

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Blog 5

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Blog 4

 A filter bubble system is a personalized search in which a website algorithm guess what information a user would like to see based on their location, past click behavior, and search history, and as a result the user is separated from things that disagrees with their view point ideally isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubble. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble) To try this feature out I asked female friend of mine to simply browse through her computer to see what kind of things showed up in her browsers. Starting off with her social media browser. Just looking at the ads on the sides I saw many advertisements for makeup and female clothing. Bringing up the exact same website on mine I had advertisement for videogames, male clothing, and shoe deals. This was no surprise as I knew that you wouldn’t want to advertise male clothing to the female community. Which makes sense as to why there were such sorts made on to our social media page. I believe that the best example to use for filter bubbles is twitter. On twitter you can follow all sorts of people you want to keep up with, or really anything in general to keep you updated in the current events going on in the world. With this I believe making a filter bubble on the site is pretty simple because you are already selecting what you want to see yourself, and with the people you follow and how your profile is set up you can only see what you want to see, while at the same time gaining more information about whatever is in your bubble. A lot of social media site do this but I am more familiar with twitter. I know with twitter based on who or what you follow you will receive certain ads in your feed depending on what kind of information is on your feed majority of the time. I know for example that I like to keep up with basketball teams so it wouldn’t be uncommon if I saw ads for something like a streaming site to watch all the games you all the games you want to watch. This also associates with the apps on your phone. While I played a video game called Hearthstone I also received promotional post about deals they were having, or a new expansion pack coming out without even following the game company itself on twitter. When I would look on to my friends feed to see if they also received these types of promotional ads I could see that they got different kinds of ads. This filter bubble keeps people who are interested in the app updated and those who are not won’t even know it exist. This keeps the user only seeing things they want to see or take interested in like described in the definition above about filter bubbles. Another good example is Facebook. When looking at my mom’s Facebook page I see a bunch of motherly post, workout post, food post, stuff about teachers, and being a Christian. This all applies to my mom and it’s the only stuff my mom will see on her Facebook page aside from what I post of course. This filters all the stuff she does and would like to keep up with. On my Facebook page its mainly just funny videos cause that’s all I seem to use my Facebook page for now anyways. So every time I log into my Facebook page I won’t see anything but videos and whatever I miss you picture post I get tagged in from my mom.

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Blog 3

As I read through “The Pattern On the Stone” I was always engaged and interested in the readings. I am always interested in learning something new which always kept the book interesting because it was full of information I’ve never learned before. Also with it being an area that I want to gain knowledge and learn more about kept me more engaged because it was something I wanted to learn, and not just a book I’m forced to read with information that I wouldn’t use. Overall this book kept me engaged a hundred percent of the time and it always stayed interesting. The most interesting thing to me in this book is in chapter 8 “Computer That Learn and Adapt”. This chapter is full of useful and interesting information in my opinion. I would honestly read this chapter again because it was my favorite, but not really because I already read the book. But in this chapter it talks about really literally what the title says. How computer learn and adapt. I thought it was really interesting how it’s possible for computer to learn and adapt to change on its own. Like it said early on in the chapter I always assumed a program needed to be updated and reprogramed for there so be and actually significant change to the program. But for a computer to learn from its errors and change itself is real interesting and makes me realize how far and how much further computers can go. Although this chapter is the one that really stood out to me, there are no boring or uninteresting parts of this book. The whole book in its entirety is an interesting book. It does a good job of keeping you in and providing good examples that are relevant and help you understand that section of the book just that much better. This whole book is full of great information and can keep me reading with no problems. In the algorithms section of the book I looked up more information on algorithms. This being mainly because I missed a lecture on algorithms, but also because reading it in the book I felt I could better understand this area if I researched it on my own. As I looked more into Algorithms I came to find all the different kinds of algorithms that were both simple and complicated. It was more information than I expected at the time but I was soon able to narrow all of it down and pick up a better understanding of the algorithms. Thanks to this book I now have an even better understanding of computers. Coming into this class thinking I knew good amount on computers and that there really wasn’t too much more to learn more about. I was mistaken, there was so much more information and so much more I realized I needed to learn. This book showed me all kinds of different things I never heard of or even thought about. This gave me many different views of computers and how they work. On a review site for pattern on the stone, I share the same views as to what this guy says in his review. He says “Most people are baffled by how computers work and assume that they will never understand them. What they don’t realize—and what Daniel Hillis’s short book brilliantly demonstrates—is that computers’ seemingly complex operations can be broken down into a few simple parts that perform the same simple procedures over and over again.” (W.Daniel Hills, http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/277658.The_Pattern_on_the_Stone). This is exactly how I felt reading the pattern in the stone. Simply put the book is a good interesting read and full of good and useful information that people would generally not even think about.

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Blog 2

This algorithm The algorithm I have decided to discuss is a selection algorithm. A selection algorithm is an algorithm includes cases of finding a minimum, maximum, and a median element. The selection algorithm is more of a sub problem of more complex problems that deal with things like the nearest neighbor (also known as a proximity search), and the shortest path (which is a problem of finding a path between two vertices in a graph).  Some of the sorting algorithms can be deprived as a repeated application of selection. Selection algorithm is basically the finding of a minimum, or maximum, element by irritating through a list keeping track of the running minimum. A hard case of a selection algorithm is finding the median, and that requires normally taking an n/2 storage. A specialized median selection algorithm is used to build a general selection of algorithm as a median of medians. Quick select is the best known selection algorithm. Quick select is kind of like quick sort (which is an efficient sorting algorithm) developed by a man named Tony Hoare which also give the quick select another name, Hoare’s selection. Like quick sort this has optimal average performance, but a poor worst case performance, but can be modified to give an optimal worst-case performance as well. Focusing more on the selection sort of selection algorithms. Selection sort is, of course, a sorting algorithm. This algorithm is noted for its simplicity and has a performance advantage over the more complicated algorithms in certain situations, particularly where auxiliary memory is limited. This algorithm divides the input list into two parts. A side where the sub list of items is already sorted which it built left to right starting from the front of the list, and another side of sub list items waiting to be sorted that occupy the rest of the list. This algorithm works by finding the smallest, or largest depending on what the sorting order is, number in the unsorted sub list and swapping them with the leftmost unsorted element and moving the sub list boundaries one element to the right. The selection sort algorithms are normally worked by taking an array of numbers, for example 12 31 25 8 33 17 40 42. In the first position in the sorted list, the whole list gets scanned sequentially.  The first position is where 12 is stored currently, after searching through the whole list we also find that 8 is the lowest value on the list. With this information you replace the 12 with the 8. After one iteration the smallest value on the list, which is 8 is now in the first position of a sorted list. For the second position you do sort of a similar step. You take the number 31 and you search the list for the second lowest value on the list. That being the 12 for earlier you switch their position. This continues through the rest of list into the numbers are sorted into order. As said earlier the selection ion sort algorithms is nice for its simplicity versus other complex algorithms which make is pretty special.  In the book “The pattern on the stone” the author says, “As in the sock example different algorithms require a different amount of time to complete.” (The Pattern on the Stone, 79, Hillis). With this algorithm of sorting numbers in order from either least too greatest, or greatest to least, this proves to be more of a less timely method when it comes to sorting. With this algorithm its constantly swamping 2 variables to get the result you need. This being a somewhat simpler method compared to of something previous to this is a vast improvement because it was also said in the book that “The difference in speed and memory requirements between a good algorithm and a bad one is often a factor of thousands or even millions” (The Pattern on the Stone, 79, Hillis), which of course is a lot. Although I am not sure on how to apply this in real world situations. I have read from other people responses that it can be used to program something like a tv remote to organize your channels in certain order like the amount of time viewed or something or the sort. (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11022756/real-world-examples-to-decide-which-sorting-algorithm-works-best, JustinDanielson)

Sources used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_sort#Implementation

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Dog names: Spot, Bella, Bailey, Charlie, Daisy

Cat names: Princess, Whiskers, Tony, Tiger, Missy

Horse names: Infinite Sleep, Can Do Without Moving, Thirty Giant Children, The Void Is Among The Spirit Realm, Aaaaaaaaaawesome Man, Cloud Computing

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CIS Blog 1

My name is Quentin Livingston My name is Quentin Livingston and I was born in San Antonio, Texas where I lived until about first grade then I moved to Houston, Texas where I was raised. My mother was a part of a military family, meaning I was born into one. I could've have been born in any other place in the world but my mother decided to settle in Texas. I chose Kansas State University on a college road trip I took prior to my senior year. Kansas was initially at the bottom of my list and actually weighed as one of my weakest options when I was deciding which university was the best fit for me. I actually wanted to attend Baylor University all through High School until I visited the college campus here. The environment was friendly and fun, the Professor's and people seemed polite and altogether I couldn't put my finger on why i ever thought this campus wasn't right for me. I have an interest in engineering and on my visit they just so happened to be building a new engineering complex, that just happened to be the icing on top of the cake and my deciding factor on attending Kansas State. I chose computer science as my major at Kansas State, because I was always around computers at a young age, and using technology always drew me in. I've always been interested in things in the technological area, such as figuring out how computers are put together, how computer software operates and many other things. Although I am not skilled in programing I am always interested in learning about new things. I know it may not seem like the best decision to take up in a major I don’t know much about but I feel that's what college is about, new experiences and figuring out what you're good at and if you're not so good at it college gives you the chance to improve your skills and make a profession out of it. Another reason I choose computer science as my major is the money, most people say they're interned in fields because it's their lifelong passion, I honestly feel like that may be true for some but others are lying. If you had a lifelong love of creating art out of garbage, but didn't make enough money to survive would you do it? The answer is most likely not. Most computer science graduates make around 60,000 and that could help me support the family that I have right now or even a family that I plan to have after graduation, well actually my computer science or basketball career could do so, which brings me into my hobbies. One of the things I do enjoy to do in my spare time is play basketball, I've played since a very young age and have noticed it always plays a part in my life. When school stresses me out, or life is getting me down I turn to basketball and dribble all my problems away, I also enjoy playing 2K, which is a basketball game, in my spare time. My family is definitely like me but somehow we're all different. I have two brothers and three sisters I am the oldest of the bunch. I enjoy being an older brother at times, I feel as if I'm seen as a role model for them. My mother and father are typical parents, but there's special because they're my parents. I've had many interesting jobs and job experiences, my last job was one in fast food, I worked at papa johns with one of my best friends and really enjoyed the job, I'd love to work with friends again, but sadly I had to leave to come here. In the text book the chapter titled, Programing(The Pattern on the Stone,39), is interesting to me because it’s a field I am least experienced in and would love to learn more about. As for keeping up with new technology and see others opinion on current tech I watch a guy’s channel on youtube named Austin Evans (https://www.youtube.com/user/duncan33303) This guy is extremely entertaining and helps me out with different aspects of technology.and I was born in San Antonio, Texas where I lived until about first grade then I moved to Houston, Texas where I was raised. My mother was a part of a military family, meaning I was born into one. I could've have been born in any other place in the world but my mother decided to settle in Texas. I chose Kansas State University on a college road trip I took prior to my senior year. Kansas was initially at the bottom of my list and actually weighed as one of my weakest options when I was deciding which university was the best fit for me. I actually wanted to attend Baylor University all through High School until I visited the college campus here. The environment was friendly and fun, the Professor's and people seemed polite and altogether I couldn't put my finger on why i ever thought this campus wasn't right for me. I have an interest in engineering and on my visit they just so happened to be building a new engineering complex, that just happened to be the icing on top of the cake and my deciding factor on attending Kansas State. I chose computer science as my major at Kansas State, because I was always around computers at a young age, and using technology always drew me in. I've always been interested in things in the technological area, such as figuring out how computers are put together, how computer software operates and many other things. Although I am not skilled in programing I am always interested in learning about new things. I know it may not seem like the best decision to take up in a major I don’t know much about but I feel that's what college is about, new experiences and figuring out what you're good at and if you're not so good at it college gives you the chance to improve your skills and make a profession out of it. Another reason I choose computer science as my major is the money, most people say they're interned in fields because it's their lifelong passion, I honestly feel like that may be true for some but others are lying. If you had a lifelong love of creating art out of garbage, but didn't make enough money to survive would you do it? The answer is most likely not. Most computer science graduates make around 60,000 and that could help me support the family that I have right now or even a family that I plan to have after graduation, well actually my computer science or basketball career could do so, which brings me into my hobbies. One of the things I do enjoy to do in my spare time is play basketball, I've played since a very young age and have noticed it always plays a part in my life. When school stresses me out, or life is getting me down I turn to basketball and dribble all my problems away, I also enjoy playing 2K, which is a basketball game, in my spare time. My family is definitely like me but somehow we're all different. I have two brothers and three sisters I am the oldest of the bunch. I enjoy being an older brother at times, I feel as if I'm seen as a role model for them. My mother and father are typical parents, but there's special because they're my parents. I've had many interesting jobs and job experiences, my last job was one in fast food, I worked at papa johns with one of my best friends and really enjoyed the job, I'd love to work with friends again, but sadly I had to leave to come here. In the text book the chapter titled, Programing(The Pattern on the Stone,39), is interesting to me because it’s a field I am least experienced in and would love to learn more about. As for keeping up with new technology and see others opinion on current tech I watch a guy’s channel on youtube named Austin Evans (https://www.youtube.com/user/duncan33303) This guy is extremely entertaining and helps me out with different aspects of technology.