The big things that computers can calculate and our reliance on them.

How much computing does your computer do for you? I think we can all agree there is a big difference between a Tip calculator and getting Mathematica to do your integrals for you (Integral‘s are advanced calculus). But then again, maybe we all can’t agree.

The other week, one of my high school tutees asked me if the only calculator I had was my little scientific. Why didn’t I also have a graphing calculator if I was so advanced in math? My response: I can do everything I need with this calculator. And by the time I can’t, I need a computer anyways. This is when I realized that high school students have no idea what the upper limits of a personal desktop computer is.

I suspect most people don’t realize how much math a computer can really do for you. Computers are used by most people to write documents, balance your check book, or surf the internet. All of these things you could do in an analog manner. Pen with paper, a check log with a calculator or a library with a card catalogue. But there are some things we actually can’t do by hand. In my current research we are running 50,000 or 100,000 tests per day per computer. These tests involve 19 or 20 calculations which include ordering numbers, finding Sines and Cosines and appending numbers to list. There is no way that we could sit as humans and run all those tests by hand. It would take decades.

Computing power is undoubtedly powerful, but is that good or bad? Computers can create a 3D image that you can twist and turn in a way you could never do by hand. The downfall is research can quickly get to the point where you have so much data that we you compile it all into a picture you end up asking, “So what does that tell us? What does that mean?”

But I would like to believe that most people have a basic pocket calculator sitting in their desk drawer just waiting for the chance when the world invites it’s owner to do some calculations of their own.