What kinds of hobbies could I do with that involve math?

[Eclair_de_XII]

So far, I've taken:

Calculus (I - IV)
Proof-writing and Logic-based Mathematics
Linear Algebra
Intro to Ordinary Differential Equations
Application of Linear Algebra to Differential Equations

People say that graphic design uses some linear algebra, but I don't know how I would branch off from that.
Otherwise, what hobbies could I do with these math courses?

 

[jedishrfu]

Hobbyist game design with physics comes to mind. You could also do interactive art using the Processing IDE in Java and your knowledge of math.

 

[berkeman]

Does your university have a Robotics Club? You could get involved in robot/drone/autonomous vehicle design, and work on the control algorithms. That can be some pretty math-intensive stuff, especially when you are trying to optimize multi-variable systems...

Plus, you get to actually see the fruits of your labors come alive as moving machines that are using your algorithms...

 

[jedishrfu]

Also mobile apps with machine learning features could be interesting to develop and do require knowledge of statistics and linear algebra and some calculus.

 

[xblaze]

With knowledge of those courses under your belt, anything related to programming would be a fun, stimulating, and rewarding endeavor. And, as mentioned above, robotics has programming, and programming has a couple of maths involved in the process. You can make good use of your knowledge to smoothly transition to the maths needed to program.

 

[symbolipoint]

The descriptions or listings given so far seem mostly academic. In case you have some employment experience which involved some less-advanced mathematics, you may want to write programs which you or a same-level colleague or other person would want to use for something that often come up in your job.

As one example, I once created a program (using a form of BASIC) which could take a very limited set of two dimensional data, like from a chem & phys handbook, and curve-fit a polynomial function to the data points. The key parts of the program were, unfortunately, hard-coded, since my linear algebra skill is not very advanced at all, so I made the program based on doing the linear system curve fitting steps on paper, to get the needed coefficients for the polynomial function. The program worked as a simulation for the curve for some boundary values of one of the variables (like the independent variable). Some/many members of this forum could probably do better.

 

[Eclair_de_XII]

There's a marine robotics club at my university, but I don't think I'm skilled enough to understand the mechanics of how a boat would move through water. I don't have much confidence in my physics skills. But I do like the general programming suggestions everyone seems to be giving me. I took a course on basic C two years ago, but I likely forgot how to operate it after years of disuse. I only wonder what I would program... Like symbolipoint said, it might be a good idea to try programming something in my field of study, I think. So probability, then, since I'm studying to be an actuary.

The key parts of the program were, unfortunately, hard-coded, since my linear algebra skill is not very advanced at all, so I made the program based on doing the linear system curve fitting steps on paper, to get the needed coefficients for the polynomial function.

I don't quite understand. So you would have needed linear algebra to "hard-code" your program into the compiler? How would you go about using linear algebra in modifying a compiler?

 

[NFuller]

What about electronics and circuit design in general? This has been a hobby of mine for about 12 years and often requires linear algebra with a bit of calculus and diff-eq.

 

[symbolipoint]

There's a marine robotics club at my university, but I don't think I'm skilled enough to understand the mechanics of how a boat would move through water. I don't have much confidence in my physics skills. But I do like the general programming suggestions everyone seems to be giving me. I took a course on basic C two years ago, but I likely forgot how to operate it after years of disuse. I only wonder what I would program... Like symbolipoint said, it might be a good idea to try programming something in my field of study, I think. So probability, then, since I'm studying to be an actuary.
I don't quite understand. So you would have needed linear algebra to "hard-code" your program into the compiler? How would you go about using linear algebra in modifying a compiler?

I made a thinking mistake. Like said, my linear algebra skills were and still are very very minimal. What I really did was that I took the two-d data from a handbook and used what was a free alternative application software at that time, and obtained the coefficients I needed using the alternative program. I then used those coefficients in MY program, which was created for simulating a curve for the two-d data. I might have tried some work on paper just to check some of the results; but I used the alternative software program to actually find the curve-fitting polynomial coefficients.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

If you are a sports fan, you could try your hand at statistical analysis of sports data, e.g. https://www.edx.org/course/sabermetrics-101-introduction-baseball-bux-sabr101x-0