SFINKS is a small conference on complex systems and interdisciplinary physics. I wanted to present something there since the first edition in 2016, but I never stood a chance. Every year there was something up, like an international exchange or a lot of tough exams. Finally, this year I was able to fullfil my dream as I presented a lightning talk O strachu przed liczeniem na papierze (eng. About the fear of calculating on paper).
Minimizing The Sum of Absolute Values – Day 7 Advent of Code part 1 ๐
This year I took part in the advent of code event. If you’ve never heard about it, I attach tl;dr bellow. Today, I’d like to share my solution for Day 7 problem, because I find it very interesting.
In the first half of the post I describe comparison in time complexity of two solutions (programming). In the second half I outline the proof of one solution (math). What is the Advent of Code # For sure you had some kind of advent calendar in the past (or you still have), e.
Square Root โ2 Pizza Box ๐๐ฆ
Today I have a short one, a follow-up to the post on pizza sizes. Recently, I was in my local pizza place where I had to choose between 32 and 46cm pizza. The bigger one cost 5 PLN more. Even without looking at my table, I chose the bigger one. I knew, however, that I’m going to eat only half of my pizza so I asked to pack the remaining half.
Practical Mathematical Optimization ๐ก๐๐ง
In the previous post I’ve presented the basics of stating mathematical optimization problems and JuMP framework in julia. Today let’s follow up with concrete examples! Please checkout the accompanying jupyter notebook even though you might not feel like a programmer. It’s very clear and shows how easy it is to obtain solutions!
Introduction Into Mathematical Optimization Way of Thinking ๐งฎ
In the post about fitting pizzas inside another pizza I’ve shown the following picture and promised a post about recreating it.
Pizzas packed in pizza However, I would not like to assume that everyone is familiar with the optimization theory (you may graduate from Computer Science and still not know a lot) so I want to present an introduction here as high school math and quadratic equations are enough to understand those concepts.
The Leuven Ring Problem โ
During my studies, I spent one semester at KU Leuven. There is one interesting mathematical problem from those times I’d like to share. This Belgian city has a topology of a big circle with a city inside.
One early, cold, damp, and windy morning (as it is in Belgium) when I was coming back from some trip I had to go from the railway station (right side of the ring) to my dormitory (bottom of the ring).
Pizza Twice as Big ๐
One morning I was standing in a queue in my local bakery, and I’ve seen a woman buying one of those small quasi-pizzas. Pizzas ~20cm in diameter. Immediately I thought about how profitable it is when compared to the full-size 42cm pizza. Since the area of a larger pizza is 4 times bigger, of course, it’s not worth buying smaller pizzas.
Then I thought about fitting smaller pizzas inside the bigger one.
Comparing fractions of fractions on COVID case ๐ท
I had a little argue recently with one anti-vaxxer and I thought it will make an interesting blog content. I tried to convince them that vaccinating is good because people are at least not dieing and what I’ve heard was:
Ohh, vaccines are not helping at all. A friend of mine is working at the hospital at says that 50% of covid patients were already vaccinated.
I decided not to argue nor check the data source, but rather give it a try.