Grad Student Looking To Contribute To Open Source

An anonymous reader writes "I'm an Applied Math grad student who knows a bit of Mathematics and a bit of programming. C++ is my first programming language — I am decent at it. I wish to start contributing to a numerical library with two purposes — contribute to open source and develop my C++ skills at the same time. I looked at the Boost libraries and joined the developer list. However, I have no idea on how to start contributing. I'm not an expert in template programming, having written only toy programs to understand that concept. I've used some of the OOP constructs like inheritance,but only for very small projects. Do you have any tips on how to get started on contribution? Are there any other emerging numerical libraries to which I can contribute? Are there any other avenues where I can contribute to open source and improve programming skills?"

Comments

Kinematics

[MichaelSmith]

I work in air traffic control and kinematics are a big deal for us. This is the software which takes care of coordinate systems, motion and transformations. Say you have a vehicle with a particular WGS84 coordinate. Its moving at a particular speed in a particular direction relative to true north. After one hour where will it be in three dimensions relative to its original position? How much distance will it have covered? What happens if its trajectory went within two metres of the south pole? What path in 3D will it follow if it maintains a constant altitude above the datum along the way?

Ok now say it is not allowed to fly into (say) North Korea which has a particular shape. How can you project its path forwards to determine if it goes into the air space over that country?

And so on. Its bloody complicated stuff and I reckon a lot of open source software would benefit from a library which did this. Ideal for a maths guy.