PGP key: 2860 B2B4 F7F7 9C63 5109 F814 42F1 B6FF 49E1 280E : 0x49E1280E
About? About what? Well, me, I guess. My name is Jeff Chapman. I'm a second, if that matters at all to you. That means there really should be a "II" after my last name. You know, all that jazz. I am a mathematician and computer scientist. To further that, I am currently enrolled in the University of Akron. I'm going for a BS in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics.
Please note that this section is horribly out of date, and I currently have neither of these jobs. I suppose this is sort of an employment history, really. I'll get around to updating it some day.
Please note that even the above is out of date. I am working the first job again.
It seems to me, not very much.
Here, I do various things. I like to call myself a researcher, as that is currently one of the primary things I do there. I'm currently researching digital wound assessment, image processing algorithms, stuff like that.
I also help take care of the site, and when school is in session I am the Introduction to Computer Science and Data Structures and Algorithms I tutor. Though, those courses have just been renamed, that's what I call them. The tutoring part isn't so bad, and I enjoy it.
Think this job involves more research? Think again. This job I don't do any research. In fact, I don't even really learn that much. But, it's work. It's not the worst work, either. At one point, about three or four years ago, I did this same type of stuff for fun. I could tell you what it is, but I'm under a non-disclosure agreement. No, it's not coding the next Facebook that energizes with a web 3.0 twitter ;)
What do I do in my free time? I program. I read books. I read papers. Boy am I glad to have been introduced to the wonderful world of academic papers. I'm certain I've got at least twenty unread on my hard drive.
I'm "into" math. I often spend hours working on a math problem I found or made up myself. A lot of times I'm incapable of solving them myself. That's when I put it on the back burner until I can. I like Ramsey theory, I'm very interested in graph theory, statistics, fractional calculus, ... There are too many things to list :) This just gave me the idea to get latex rendering on here and start making updates about math.
I love computer science. I know a lot about compression, and have implemented some of my own ideas as tests (pretty much entirely a flop). I do a fair bit with particle simulations. I've implemented the Barnes-Hut algorithm, and have been reading as much as I can about the fast multi-pole method whenever I can. I get interrupted a lot, but I'll always come back to it, you can be sure of that :)
Note: this is long and really boring, to most people. So, unless you're like me and like knowing things about people, just skip over this column.
I'm also a student at UA. Now, I graduated highschool in 2010, so I'm going into my 3rd semester since graduating that. However, I've actually going into my 4th year of classes (6th semester). Since I'm only a Sophomore, you can say I'm either pretty far ahead compared to when I graduated highschool, or pretty far behind for how long I've been going. The first 2 years (3 of those semesters) was post-secondary in math. I think after the fall semester (2011), I may be a Junior.
This part of what I do at UA, I'm fairly good at. Starting out when I was a Junior in highschool, I started taking post-secondary calculus. I really should have skipped Calc I, but I took that the first semester. Then I took Calc II and III the other two post-secondary semesters.
In the Fall semester 2010 is when I started full time (first semester after graduating highschool). I started off with a schedule with no Computer Science courses in it. I was told I was "kind of behind" due to the fact that I took so long to register. I was advised to try to get into ICS (intro. to CS) if a professor would let me. I managed to do that, so going into it, I was going to take
That filled up the 12-16 hours I could take without costing more money (I was/am still going entirely on government aid and scholarships). First day of ICS, I realized I made a huge mistake. I already knew all of the material. I talked to my professor, who directed me to the head of the CS department, Dr. Chan. I was able to meet with him, and he placed me in Data Structures and Algorithms II (skipping ICS, and DSAI). That opened enough time for me to also squeeze in Effective Oral communication. My revised schedule then for my first semester was:
That semester went alright, I really didn't apply myself, but I managed to get a 4.0 in DSAII, and bring my GPA up to a 3.0 (I really didn't apply myself in HS). Next semester my schedule looked like:
This semester, I did really bad in Economics (went to maybe 7 classes). I didn't do most of the homework in FOAM, so I got a C there. I did pretty well in the other classes though XD. I found another Freshman who was in my math classes, so I'm not wholly unique in my math ability, in fact, I'm not that special at all, really.
This is the semester I was hired as a tutor, and the semester I became a Choose Ohio First Scholar, in Bioinformatics. That was a bunch of fun :D I got to present a poster at the Conference of Undergraduate and Graduate Student Research, and got best presentation of the section (there were three sections in all). Because of the COF thing, I also got to go a few masters dissertation defenses that were very interesting.
Coming up will be the Fall 2011 semester. Here's what my schedule looks like now:
So, compared to everybody else I know who graduated HS at the same time I did, I'm pretty far in both of my majors (Computer Science and Applied Mathematics). I guess I can be considered good at what I do, but there are surely people much smarter than I am out there.
As I've said, I get fairly poor grades. Here they are:
| 2008 | Fall | |||
| 3450:221 | Analytic Geometry-Calculus I | 4.00 | B+ | 3.300 |
| 3.300 | 3.300 | |||
| 2009 | Spring | |||
| 3450:222 | Analytic Geometry-Calculus II | 4.00 | C- | 1.700 |
| 1.700 | 2.500 | |||
| 2009 | Fall | |||
| 3450:223 | Analytic Geometry-Calculus III | 4.00 | C+ | 2.300 |
| 2.300 | 2.433 | |||
| 2010 | Fall | |||
| 3300:112 | English Composition II | 3.00 | A | 4.000 |
| 3450:208 | Introduction to Discrete Math | 4.00 | A | 4.000 |
| 3460:316 | Data Structures and Algorithms II | 3.00 | A | 4.000 |
| 3750:100 | Introduction to Psychology | 3.00 | B | 3.000 |
| 7600:106 | Effective Oral Communication | 3.00 | B- | 2.700 |
| 3.569 | 3.082 | |||
| 2011 | Spring | |||
| 3250:100 | Introduction to Economics | 3.00 | C | 2.000 |
| 3450:307 | Fundamentals of Advanced Mathematics | 3.00 | C | 2.000 |
| 3450:335 | Introduction to Ordinary Differential Equations | 3.00 | B+ | 3.300 |
| 3460:307 | Internet Systems Programming | 3.00 | B+ | 3.300 |
| 3460:408 | Windows Programming | 3.00 | A | 4.000 |
| 2.920 | 3.026 | |||
| 2011 | Fall | |||
| 3450:415 | Combinatorics and Graph Theory | 3.00 | B+ | 3.300 |
| 3450:427 | Applied Numerical Methods I | 3.00 | F | 0.00? |
| 3460:426 | Operating Systems | 3.00 | F | 0.00? |
| 3460:428 | Unix Systems Programming | 3.00 | A | 4.000 |
| 3470:461 | Applied Statistics | 4.00 | F | 0.00? |
| 1.369 | 2.576 | |||
| 2012 | Fall | |||
| 3450:413 | Theory of Numbers | 3.00 | A | 4.000 |
| 3460:435 | Algorithms | 3.00 | A | 4.000 |
| 3460:489 | Special Topics in CS: Cloud Computing | 3.00 | A | 4.000 |
| 4450:320 | Computer Systems | 3.00 | A | 4.000 |
| 4.000 | 2.817 | |||
| 2013 | Spring | |||
| 3460:489 | Special Topics in CS: Cloud Computing II | 3.00 | A | 4.000 |
| 3470:461 | Applied Statistics | 4.00 | C+ | 2.300 |
| 4450:325 | Operating Systems Concepts | 3.00 | A | 4.000 |
| 4450:498 | Special Topics Computer Engineering: Networked Embedded Systems | 3.00 | A | 4.000 |
| 5550:211 | First Aid and CPR | 2.00 | B- | 2.700 |
| 3.373 | 3.056 | |||
| 2013 | Fall | |||
| 3400:210 | Humanities in Western Tradition I | 4.00 | ? | ?.??? |
| 3450:312 | Linear Algebra | 3.00 | ? | ?.??? |
| 3460:421 | Object-Oriented Programming | 3.00 | ? | ?.??? |
| 3502:210 | Chinese Culture Through Film | 2.00 | ? | ?.??? |
| ?.??? | ?.??? |
Note: That probably looks like crap. I'll fix it later