Week 2: Working with the helper functions

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Hi everybody,
It's that time of the week again—here’s my latest update on the progress I’ve made. Let’s dive right into it!

What I did this week

As I mentioned in my previous blog, this week’s focus was on implementing the two helper functions: methodSwitch() and orderSwitch() functions, which is what I did. 
Here's the link to the PR involving this: Pull Request

Here’s a quick summary:
  • Implemented the methodSwitch() and orderSwitch() functions.
  • Added detailed docstrings for both to enhance readability and future maintainability.
  • Refactored the stoda() method to include calls to these helpers where necessary.
  • Developed and added unit tests for both methods to ensure correctness and coverage.

Meeting with Mentors

This week I had two meetings. 

    1-on-1 with Arthur – June 10, 2025

  • Arthur and I finally had our long-overdue 1-on-1 call! We’d been planning this since the application phase, but it kept getting postponed—so it was nice to finally catch up properly.
  • We jumped straight into the mathematics behind the prja() and correction() functions. Arthur also mentioned he would share a document with a detailed explanation of several other critical methods (and he did later in the week!).
  • We then walked through the changes requested on the previous PR, by Arthur, and resolved them one by one.
  • We had to be quick with this meeting since neither of us has Zoom Premium.

    Weekly Mentor Meeting – June 12, 2025

  • We went through the PR again, Dr. Draeger and Dr. Funahashi reviewed it, discussed a few technical queries, and after some clarifications—it got approved and merged! We also had a quick chat about "rebase vs merge" in git.
  • Dr. Funahashi shared a way to implement the alloc_memory function, which contains malloc and calloc calls, in Java.
  • Arthur also shared the document he promised during our earlier call. It included an excellent breakdown of the mathematical foundations of the cfode, correction, and stoda functions. We went over it briefly during the meeting. It was really helpful.
  • I also shared a quick recap of my progress so far.

What's Next

Now that all the helper methods are in place (at least, that's what I think), it’s time to tackle the LSODA driver function itself.

It definitely looks a bit challenging—but honestly, that’s where the real fun begins! I’m looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting into it.


Till then,
Bye!

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