Applied Math
How the Hippies Saved Physics Book Review
How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival David Kaiser W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 2011 372 pages How the Hippies Saved Physics is…
John F. McGowan, Ph.D.
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He can be reached at jmcgowan11@earthlink.net.
This article is copyright © of John F. McGowan, Ph.D.
Articles
Applied Math
Recent Data For Planning Mathematical Software Projects
This article is a follow up to the previous article Estimating the Cost and Schedule of Mathematical Software. In the previous article, the author advocated using software engineering…
Applied Math
Estimating the Cost and Schedule of Mathematical Software
Mathematics and mathematical software combined with today’s powerful computers can deliver large improvements in speed and efficiency as well as new useful features. Mathematical software is in widespread…
Applied Math
Animations of a Possible Cure for Cancer
This article is the third in a series on possible ways to use mathematics to cure or treat cancer, that began with Can Mathematics Cure Cancer?. It presents…
Applied Math
Tackling Cancer with Math
The recent death of Apple founder Steve Jobs from pancreatic cancer at the young age of fifty-six highlights the dismal progress in the War on Cancer, despite over…
Applied Math
The Cold Hit Problem
The previous article Are Fingerprints Unique? discussed the case of Brandon Mayfield, a Muslim American attorney from the Portland, Oregon area who was wrongly identified as one of…
Essential Math
Are Fingerprints Unique?
On March 11, 2004 a series of bombs exploded aboard four commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, killing 192 people and injuring 2050. The Spanish police recovered a bag…
Applied Math
The Magical Mathematics of Numb3rs
Numb3rs is a television show that ran for six seasons on CBS from 2005 to 2010 about FBI agent Don Eppes and his brother Charles, a child math…
Applied Math
Creating Cartoon Voices with Math
Have you ever wanted to create a humorous or entertaining voice like a cartoon character’s voice for a get-well video, a Valentine’s video, the narration for a DVD…
Applied Math
Can Mathematics Cure Cancer?
“I will also ask for an appropriation of an extra $100 million to launch an intensive campaign to find a cure for cancer, and I will ask later…
History
Eberhardt Rechtin and the Barrier Course: A Case Study in Math Education
At present, at any rate, very little evidence exists that great mathematicians and calculating prodigies have been endowed with an exceptional neurobiological structure. Like the rest of us,…
Applied Math
Protecting Valuable Intellectual Property in Octave
Octave is a free, open-source high-level interpreted language, primarily intended for numerical computations that is mostly compatible with MATLAB. Octave is an excellent tool for the rapid research…