Correção de texto: Diary

(about 3 weeks ago)

Yesterday was the back to school time. Usually I would not be very happy about it, but this time I was really looking forward to attending classes again, mainly because I’m now finally taking subjects (actually, only 2) in my specific area (Computer Science). The subjects that I’m taking are (1): introduction to Probability and Statistics, Digital Circuits, Object-oriented Programming, Energy, Science, Technology and Society and Quantum Physics.

I was (well, I am) anxious also in part because of the preparation for TOEFL (I will make the exam in 2 weeks). I have thought a lot about what country I will choose, which depends mainly on my score on (2) the language exam, once my grades are above the average, I have done a Scientific Iniciation Program and I have some good results in math olympiads and robotics championship (nothing extraordinary, just high school competitions). I would say the country I was thinking about, but as I change my mind every week,it’s better don’t say anything, hehe.

My only class of the day was Digital Circuits. The professor is very friendly and told to the class some funny stories from his life. For example, although he has a undergraduate degree in (3) electronics engineering, he said that he actually hasn’t got used to the practical part of the course because there was a friend of him who was used to do this part alone and very quickly when there were practical classes! He abandoned (4) the engineering studies in further studies and got a PHD in Neuroscience. It may appear a radical change and, in part, it was, however, he explained how, actually, there is certain link between these areas: in electronic, there are three main types of logic gates: AND, OR and NOT. However, a complex circuit with all this three types of gates can be simplified by using some NAND (if I’m not mistaken) gates. So, if you look closely to a digital circuit, you will see a lot of NANDs gates. The fact of all these gates can generate a complex operation isn’t exactly intuitive. In fact, as he said, if the human civilization were destroied and some aliens were visiting our planet, they would look to the circuits and didn’t understand (5) how a apparently repetitive thing can carry out complex algorithms. In other words, deciphering a circuit would be a very hard task of reversal engineering. But what does it has to do with our mind? Well, according to him, if you analyze the human brain, you would see a big number of cells and structures very similar, in spite of our obviously complex behavior. That’s why understanding how to brain works is so hard: it is, in the same way of a circuit, a difficult exercise of reversal engineering! Actually, this is not the only analogy between the nature and technology that he told us, there are much others also very interesting. I was really excited!

In the evening, I had diner with many friends, which is unusual, since after the first period of the university, each one has followed a different way (it means, different subjects, courses and so on). I really liked the meeting!