Math Resources

I feel like I have not been posting very much on this blog lately. I have been focused on things outside of Oracle performance so I haven’t had a lot of new scripts to post.  I have been quietly updating my Python source code on GitHub so check that out. I have spent a lot of time educating myself in various ways including through the leadership and communication training program that comes from Toastmasters. My new job title is “Technical Architect” which is a form of technical leadership so I’m trying to expand myself beyond being an Oracle database administrator that specializes in performance tuning.

In addition to developing my leadership and communication skills I have gotten into a general computer science self-education kick. I took two introductory C.S. classes on edX. I also read a book on Linux hacking and a book on computer history. I was thinking of buying one of the Donald Knuth books or going through MIT’s free online algorithms class class 6.006. I have a computer science degree and spent two years in C.S. graduate school but that was a long time ago. It is kind of fun to refresh my memory and catch up with the latest trends. But the catch is that both the Knuth book and MIT’s 6.006 class require math that I either never learned or have forgotten. So, I am working my way through some math resources that I wanted to share with those who read this blog.

The first thing I did was to buy a computer math book, called Concrete Mathematics,  that seemed to cover the needed material. Reviews on Amazon.com recommended this book as good background for the Knuth series and one of the Oracle performance experts that I follow on Twitter recommended it for similar reasons. But, after finishing my second edX class I began exploring the MIT OCW math class that was a prerequisite to MIT’s 6.006 algorithms class. MIT calls the math class 6.042J and I am working through the Fall 2010 version of the class. There is a lot of overlap between the class and the book but they are not a perfect match. The book has some more difficult to follow material than the class. It is probably more advanced.  The class covers some topics, namely graph theory, that the book does not.  The free online class has some very good lecture videos by a top MIT professor, Tom Leighton. I even had my wife and daughters sit down and watch his first lecture with me on our family television for fun on my birthday.

The book led me to a great free math resource called Maxima. Maxima has all kinds of great math built into it such as solving equations, factoring integers, etc. Plus, it is free. There are other similar and I think more popular programs that are not free but for my use it was great to simply download Maxima and have its functionality at my fingertips.

The last resource that I wanted to mention is the Mathematics section of Stack Exchange. It is a pretty structured online forum with a question and answer format. It is helpful to me since I am going through 6.042J without a professor or teaching assistant to answer my questions. The people on math stack exchange are very helpful if you at least try to follow the etiquette for their forum. For example, they have an easy to use way to format math formulas in your questions and answers and the users of the forum expect you to use it. But it isn’t hard. I had one question from the Concrete Math book where I couldn’t understand the answer key in the back. I asked about it on stack exchange and got a great answer in no time.

Anyway, maybe all of this math and computer science study is a departure from my bread and butter Oracle database work and performance tuning. But the free online resources like the OCW web site, the Maxima program, and the stack exchange forum along with the book that I paid for are a great set of resources. I have already used some of the concepts that I have learned about number theory and its application to RSA encryption. But, at the same time I am enjoying studying these things and mostly see it as something fun to do in my spare time. (I’m weird I know.)

So, I have written this blog post to share the math related things that I am studying and using to those who might benefit from them. I am not a math expert, but I am getting a lot out of these materials. I hope that others find these resources as enjoyable and educational as I have.

Bobby