Raul Casado |
Madrid (EFE).- The date (3/14 according to the way days are expressed in the United States) is not a mere coincidence, and international organizations and research centers celebrate Pi Day today and that nothing in science is understood without this irrational number that hides navigation keys, algorithms or artificial intelligence.
“3.141592….” (the sequence is infinite) has been for centuries the most fascinating and studied of numbers; First to reveal the relationship between the circumference of a circle and its diameter – which is crucial in calculus – but then in all fields of knowledge: in physics, in engineering, in many medical developments, in quantum computing or understanding the rules that govern the universe.
Mathematician David Reus, professor of risk analysis and data science at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (ICMAT) of the Supreme Council for Scientific Research, notes that pi is also behind the algorithm that advises the next purchase, which suggests a song or book song about economic forecasting and automated machine learning.
In statements to EFE, David Reuss insists that this mathematical constant appears in practically all scientific disciplines because of the properties and solutions it offers for each of them. However, he emphasizes that many of these properties are still unknown and that many solutions to some of the challenges facing humanity ( economic, medical or security) underlie the mathematics.
Pi: transcendent, irrational, and infinite
Although Pi Day has been celebrated unofficially for several decades, in the United States it became official in 2009 with the approval of a resolution in the House of Representatives, and UNESCO included it in its calendar, also officially, five years ago, although with the more general title of ” World Mathematics Day.
UNESCO wants to emphasize that the success of Internet search engines depends on mathematical algorithms, or that secure communications depend on number theory, or that some medical devices (ring ring or scanner) depend on collecting data, which are digital numbers that the algorithm converts into images.
Deciphering the human genome has been a scientific achievement supported by statistics, computer science and mathematics, which transform computer vision, machine translation or autonomous vehicles and are used to understand how epidemics spread, design electoral systems and legislation or to better understand them. Natural hazards and disaster prevention.
Emphasizing the importance of mathematics, Pi Day is celebrated every 3/14 (the 14th of the 3rd). Mathematician David Reuss has explained that it is a “transcendent”, “irrational” and “infinite” number and that it will always be so, although progress is made every year in knowing how many decimals associated with the number 3 actually exist, although sources differ. Significantly, by more than 60 billion.
The algorithm is unbiased
David Reuss highlighted the presence of mathematics in general, and py in particular, in almost all disciplines of science and technology, and pointed in particular to machine learning and artificial intelligence, to emphasize that one of the ways in which algorithms “learn” is based precisely on a normal distribution.
These algorithms – a computer expression based on mathematical methods – are able to provide recommendations in Internet searches – and even predict what a person is searching for – or medical predictions, or suggestions for songs or readings based on “logical” inferences that arrive at a conclusion. Mathematical way after collecting a lot of digital data (past purchases, similar tastes of people with a similar profile, etc.).
The researcher emphasized that the algorithms “do not have biases,” but the data with which they were trained and with which they learned did, and in this sense he defended the importance of promoting “fairness, justice, and the absence of biases.” In those training courses.
Looking to the future, he does not hesitate to point out that the main challenge facing mathematical sciences, at the theoretical level, is to solve the “millennium problems” that have not yet been solved and many of which will be discovered. new concepts; At the applied level, the “maximum likelihood” model would allow for more accurate probabilistic predictions and calculations, which would be “extremely useful” – he noted – in fields such as economics, medicine or security.
On the occasion of Pi Day, the State Research Agency released information: Since 2018, it has funded 538 research projects in sports sciences with more than 30 million euros that aim, among other goals, to develop systems for the prevention of natural disasters and biomarkers that allow obtaining a virtual biopsy for diagnosis. Breast cancer cases or prediction algorithms that avoid discrimination due to data bias.
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