Twitter: @poespost
Blog: poespost.weebly.com
John Urschel is probably the coolest NFL player you've never heard of. Some might say he's math genius first, and football player second. John is the kind of player who young fans and adult fans alike should look up to. He's one of the few players in the NFL who has made more noise off the field than on it, except John has only made the news for good reasons, unlike a lot of NFL players.
John made headlines recently for having a paper published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Computational Mathematics, the paper was entitled: "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians". Curious what that means? Here's a summary: "In this paper, we develop a cascadic multigrid algorithm for fast computation of the Fiedler vector of a graph Laplacian, namely, the eigenvector corresponding to the second smallest eigenvalue. This vector has been found to have applications in fields such as graph partitioning and graph drawing. The algorithm is a purely algebraic approach based on a heavy edge coarsening scheme and pointwise smoothing for refinement. To gain theoretical insight, we also consider the related cascadic multigrid method in the geometric setting for elliptic eigenvalue problems and show its uniform convergence under certain assumptions. Numerical tests are presented for computing the Fiedler vector of several practical graphs, and numerical results show the efficiency and optimality of our proposed cascadic multigrid algorithm." Here's my summary: John Urschel is streets ahead of practically anybody in terms of intelligence and pure genius. So how exactly did John's love of math come about? It started at an early age. In an interview with Rolling Stone, John said "math is something I've done since I can remember. I'm very passionate about math – it's something I've been in love with for a very, very long time." Jonn mentioned that his mother noticed he was very good at solving puzzles and pattern recognition at a young age. John's math career, (let's call it his first career) has already taken him many places. Johngraduated with bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics from Penn State. While at Penn State, John received the "academic Heisman" award, the Senior CLASS Award (presented to the 'total student-athlete), and the James E. Sullivan, often referred to as the "Oscar of sports awards". In addition to having his paper published, John frequently teaches and lectures to college classes. John is also an avid chess player, and says he would like to become 'a titled player one day'. John got a chance to prove his smarts on the Wonderlic test, an exam traditionally given to upcoming NFl rookies. He scored an excellent 43 out of 50, John humbly said he was "very disappointed in himself". John also lives very modestly, driving a used Nissan Versa hatchback and 'living on less than 25k a year.' Despite criticism from teammates, John says he plans to keep the Versa. John's passion for math is only matched by his passion for football. John once said, "I spent all my time [in college] doing either math or football because those were my two loves. It's what I wake up and can't wait to do." John's father played in the CFL, and John said he was inspired by his dad to play the sport. John truly loves the game, as evidenced by this excerpt from his recent article in the Players' Tribune: I’m not playing for the money. I’m not playing for some social status associated with being an elite athlete. No, the media has not brainwashed me into thinking this is what real men do. If one thing is clear, It's that John Urschel is a very passionate man of many passions. He loves the textbook as much as the girdiron. Hopefully we'll see John anchoring the O-Line soon, and some have said he's very much like former Ravens center Matt Birk, who is a Harvard alumni. John truly embodies what it means to be a Baltimore Raven, a great football player, and an even better person.
|
Never miss Ravens breaking news!