… by Manab / from Odisha, India / BSc Computer Science and Mathematics / 2nd Year (UG)
I remember around 4 years ago, I was going through a rough patch with my mathematics- so much so that I wanted to drop it. Complex numbers, functions and relations, trigonometry, you know how it goes. I was travelling to my hometown from where I was studying at that moment, with my cousin who used to study computer science at university at that time, and I expressed my concerns. I asked him about functions, how I didn’t feel comfortable with it and how it didn’t feel tangible. He immediately bought a notebook and a pen from the railway station while we were waiting for the train, and went on to explain to me functions, calculus, graphs and what not from the very basics.
Throughout the journey, I was enjoying calculus, which was supposed to be taught to me formally at school, a year later from the date. I reached home, and I decided I wouldn’t drop mathematics, and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life. I still have that notebook.
I am now fundamentally interested in scientific computing, which is the intersection of the two subjects I do currently. There is a nice story behind my interest in this topic.
When I was applying to university, I was going through some personal statements from students on the internet. On one of them, I noticed someone had written that he had calculated the 6th perfect number through his computer.
Quite honestly, I was shocked as to why someone would write that. I thought- “wait isn’t this simple?”. I went on and used a certain algorithm I knew from before.
For people who do not know- A perfect number is a positive integer that is equal to the sum of its positive divisors, excluding the number itself, for example 6 (1+2+3 = 6).
I quickly wrote out a program and asked it to stop when it finds the 6th perfect number. I ran the algorithm through an infinite loop and kept a counter for each time it finds a perfect number. It looked something like this (excuse the extreme nerdy aspect it gets better I promise):
This algorithm is basic, straight from the definition, with no complex mathematics involved. That is why I was not impressed with the personal statement I found earlier. However, this gets stuck at the 4th Perfect number. I was so shocked, why is this happening?
Upon further research I found, this algorithm, on my computer system, would take roughly 109 seconds or 32 years to compute the 6th perfect number!
Massive yikes.
This and other similar incidents have really got me intrigued about number theory and how computing is helpful in its research. I would recommend looking up Mersenne primes and perfect numbers – mathematicians have developed much better algorithms.
Mathematics has been a big part of my life, and I really enjoy studying it here at University. With the current climate of the pandemic, I wish things could go back to normal soon again. I look forward to joining MathSoc next year and meeting more people!