What is Journal club As a new grad student, I need to read a lot of papers. A rule of thumb for new grad students is to read 5-7 papers every week. As I read through them, I highlight statements, leave comments in the margins, and write up a small note about what I thought…
A Whole New Ballgame In the past, this blog has covered the 2-Body problem which is solvable (Kinda) and the general n-body problem which isn’t. We have a lot of insight into how the 2-body dynamics work, but unfortunately, they break down as soon as we get away from any major body. If you want…
Good Enough Numerical Methods are all about getting an answer that is good enough. A whole class of numerical methods are iterative methods, which continue running until they are good enough. Newton’s method is the example of an iterative method. It keeps going, making the error smaller and smaller until it finds a zero. A good…
Good Enough Numerical methods are always concerned with the term “good enough”. Whether you are using a finite difference to approximate a derivative, or Newtons method to find the roots of a function, we rarely get an exact answer. Usually, our answer is different from the truth by some amount. We generally don’t know what our error…
Bumpy Terrain Imagine you are halfway up a mountain. Half an hour ago you decided to start bushwhacking and now you’re completely turned around and lost. What’s worse is that you’ve also lost your map and compass. It’s getting late and you need to get back to your home at the foot of the mountain.…
