Mathematics in Everyday Life

Gilad Lerman
Department of Mathematics
University of Minnesota

Highland park elementary (6th graders)

 What homework do I give
What do mathematicians do?
my students?
• Example of a recent homework: Denoising
 What projects do I assign
What do mathematicians do?
my students?
• Example of a recent project:
Recognizing Panoramas
• Panorama: wide view of a physical space

• How to obtain a panorama?

 How to obtain a panorama
1. By “rotating line camera”
2. Stitching together multiple images
Your camera can do it this way…
E.g. PhotoStitch (Canon PowerShot SD600)
 Experiment with PhotoStitch
Input: 10 images along a bridge

Experiment done by Rebecca Szarkowski

 Experiment continued…
Output: Panorama (PhotoStitch)

Output: Panorama (by a more careful mathematical algorithm)

Experiment done by Rebecca Szarkowski

New Topic: Relation of Imaging
What’s math got to do with it?
and Mathematics
From visual images to numbers (or digital images)
Digital Image Acquisition
 From Numbers to Images
Let us type the following numbers

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7
8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8

We then color them so 1=black, 8=white

rest of colors are in between
 One more time…
Now we’ll try the following numbers

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16
32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32
64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64
128 128 128 128 128 128 128 128

We then color them so 1=black, 128=white

rest of colors are in between
 Let’s compare
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7
8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16
32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32
64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64
128 128 128 128 128 128 128 128
 From an Image to Its Numbers
We start with clown image
It has 200*320 numbers
I can’t show you all…
Let’s zoom on eye (~40*50)
 Image to Numbers (Continued)
We’ll zoom on middle of eye image (10*10)
 The Numbers (Continued)
The middle of eye image (10*10)

80 81 80 80 80 80 77 77 37 11
81 80 81 80 80 80 77 37 9 6
80 80 80 80 80 80 37 11 2 11
80 80 80 80 80 77 66 66 66 54
80 80 80 80 77 77 77 80 77 80
80 80 79 77 66 54 66 77 66 54
77 80 77 70 22 57 51 70 51 70
77 73 70 22 2 2 22 37 37 22
77 77 54 37 1 6 2 8 2 6
77 70 70 22 2 2 6 8 8 6

Note the rule:

Bright colors – high numbers
Dark colors - low numbers
More Relation of Imaging and Math
Averaging numbers  smoothing images
Idea of averaging: 80 81 80 80 80 80 77 77 37 11
81 80 81 80 80 80 77 37 9 6

take an image 80
80
80
80
80
80
80
80
80
80
80
77
37
66
11
66
2 11
66 54
80 80 80 80 77 77 77 80 77 80

Replace each point by 80

77
80
80
79
77
77
70
66
22
54
57
66
51
77
70
66 54
51 70
77 73 70 22 2 2 22 37 37 22
average with its neighbors 77
77
77
70
54
70
37
22
1
2
6
2
2
6
8
8
2 6
8 6

70 22 57

For example, 2 has the neighborhood 22

37
2
1
2
6

So replace 2 by 70+22+57+22+2+2+37+1+6
9
= 24
1
3
Example: Smoothing by averaging

Original image on top left

It is then averaged with neighbors
of distances 3, 5, 19, 15, 35, 45
Example: Smoothing by averaging
And removing wrinkles by both….
More Relation of Imaging and Math
Differences of numbers  sharpening images

On left image of moon

On right its edges (obtained by differences)
We can add the two to get a sharpened version of the first
Moon sharpening (continued)
 Real Life Applications
• Many…
• From a Minnesota based company…

• Their main job: maintaining railroads

• Main concern: Identify cracks in railroads,
before too late…
 How to detect damaged rails?
• Traditionally… drive along the rail (very long) and
inspect
• Very easy to miss defects (falling asleep…)
• New technology: getting pictures of rails
Millions of images then collected
 How to detect Cracks?
• Human observation…
• Train a computer…
• Recall that differences detect edges…

Work done by Kyle Heuton (high school student at Saint Paul)

 Summary
• Math is useful (beyond the grocery store)
• Images are composed of numbers
• Good math ideas  good image processing