About

Daniel Edwins: past and present

Daniel Edwins currently resides in the town of Northfield, Minnesota—land of cows, colleges and contentment—also where he grew up. He made the far trek to the other side of the river and up the steep slopes of Manitou heights to find a school. This is no ordinary school. This school has been called Camelot. Daniel agrees with that interpretation. On this hill, he attends school at St. Olaf College in pursuit of a degree in Mathematics. Yes, math. Daniel is even a self-proclaimed Mathemagician. Performing tricks all over the world (most notably in Hungary). But for his senior year of college, Daniel will be taking challenging courses in other departments in order to be a good liberal arts student. He has a passion for communities and a drive to learn about sociology and different cultures. So his remaining studies will focus in those areas.

Daniel will stop referring to himself in third-person now.

Why, oh why, Math?

Well, that’s a loaded question. No, I am not a math major because I’m going to grad school. No, I am not going to be a math teacher. No, I do not know exactly why I was a math major. Mostly, it strikes my curiosity. Also, I appreciate the analytical, logical and critical thinking skills that inherently come with being a math major. Also, St. Olaf has such a great Math department.

I like to see the underlying structure to things. Usually the structure is more interesting than the object itself. I wanted to test my math skills to see if I should go to grad school in Math. So, I went on the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program. See my photos. Math was extremely challenging in Hungary. I took theoretical math courses in Combinatorics, Number Theory and Algebraic Geometry and it stretched my abilities farther than I thought possible. While I really enjoyed my courses and did well in them, I did not enjoy working on theory as much as working with actual data. So, I found out that I am more of an applied sort-of-person.

One application that used a lot of math was my computer science research from this summer.

Research

I just finished up the second of two summers doing research in the field of Stereo Vision. More specifically, I concentrated on image segmentation and the correspondence problem. Our goal was to calculate an accurate depth map of a scene given two images of that scene. Our results are very good and, perhaps, publishable after some fine-tuning.

I like this research because it combines three of my major interests: art, computer science and math.

Future plans

Short answer: none.

Long answer: well…I am hoping to get an internship next summer at some company in the valley and then get a job with some consulting firm or work for a non-profit for a year. Then I hope to go to grad school in either Human-Computer Interaction or Information Science. But, I want to help people and to make a difference in this world, so I need to incorporate those two things into my plans. Ask me again in a year.

If you would like to make a difference in my future plans, please view my resume.

I think Gandhi summed up my dilemma best: “be the change you wish to see in the world.” Well…I’m trying.

Current Schedule

This is my rough schedule and the activities I will be involved in for next year.

Classes — First Semester 2007

  • Comp Science 253 — Algorithms and Data Structures
  • Exercise 133B — Individual Fitness
  • Physics 124A — Principles of Physics I (Lab F)
  • Religion 230A — Theology of Creation
  • Sociology 263 — Social Movements

Extracurricular Activities

Personal Links

These are some more personal pages:

These are some of my personal RSS feeds:

See information about this site.