TEqb

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

So, this is the last blog of the summer.  I can't believe this is the last week.  It's gone by so fast.  It feels like just yesterday we all met together in the Gilbreath hall.  When I was coming into this program, I had no idea what to expect and who I would meet.  But it worked out well because we learned a lot and seemed to have made great friends.  I'm going to miss seeing people everyday.  Also, I've gotten to know the REU guys, and they are so much fun to hang out with.  It took a while to actually start hanging out with them but after the camping trip, I feel like we all know the REU people better and the same on their part.  I think the saddest part of this program being over is that I don't get to see Patty or the REU guys anymore.  Hopefully though, some day our paths will cross again.

Lately, we've been having lectures about fractals, monte carlo methods, and complexity in the mornings and working on our projects during the afternoons.  I'm doing the fractal biology project, which is interesting but hard.  Katie, Alex, Nicole, and I are working on the project together.  We still haven't figured out how to make a fern in just basic quite yet but hopefully we'll figure it out by tonight or tomorrow.  Dr. Yampolsky has been helping us on it.  So, we are trying to make our presentation actually interesting and fun rather than boring.  We were thinking of putting in pictures of fractals and having a hands-on activity to get everyone involved and listening. 

Dr. Knisley taught us on Monday about fractals and chaos.  He started out by talking about self-similarity and different dimension.  Barnesly said "Any image can be approximated by a fractal." in his Collage Theorem in the 1980s.  I found that quotation very interesting. 

I hope everyone else had as much fun as I did.