Hello! I see you’ve landed on my about page. Well then I guess it’s time for introductions.
My name is Chase Ashton. I’m currently a Senior in the Applied and Computational Math Emphasis (ACME) program at BYU. I’ve been enjoying learning about mathematics and the ways we can use it solve problems today. Some of my favorite topics have been uncontstrained and constrained optimization problems, reinforcement learning, classifiers, and of course linear algebra. While I enjoy the things I learn, I enjoy more the people that I am surrounded by. This school year I’ve been spending time working with my cohort to understand the statistics side of machine learning, and modeling dynamic systems.
Along with math, I am an enjoyer of computer programming. Hence the reason I am self-hosting this blog. I enjoy coding both in the sense of software engineering and machine learning. Software engineering scratches my itch for creation, and machine learning scratches my itch for trying new things. Along with my math classes, this semster I am enjoying learning about deep learning and using the python package pytorch to build neural networks and use them for their many applications.
I’ve always enjoyed computer and coding. Starting when I was in elementary school I had fun playing with scratch.mit.edu. I also remember when my eyes were opened because one of my classmates showed me how I could right-click on a website, inspect the source code, and change the text from inside. I made my first HTML Website about myself in middle school. I was amazed to see code that I had written open up in a google chrome tab. I’ve always been eager to learn new things. My coding knowledge grew through high school up until I started college at BYU.
Following high school I served a two year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Chile. (I got to help people live happier lives and become fluent in spanish)
Since coming back from my mission I switched my major from Computer Science and Product design to ACME. Which brings me to today.
You find me at a crossroads in my life (it may be possible that we are always at a cross roads). As I am soon to graduate college I am eager and hopeful to see where I decide to go.