the artist
African University of Science and Technology, Nigeria
Halima Yusuf is a mathematician from Nigeria who works on developing algorithms for solving finite sums of monotone inclusion problems, and establishing their convergence to an optimal solution.
the artwork
Lissafi a Rayuwarmu
Hausa - Mathematics in Our Lives - 2025 - digital collage
0 days - 18 hours - 25 minutes
audio commentary
I’m passionate about the science in my artwork because it expresses my research in optimization. I imagined algorithms as rivers flowing toward an ocean (solution), with each river representing a known algorithm. One of the rivers—Projective Splitting—is the focus of my research. Real-life figures, like a doctor and a Fulani herdsman, reflect broader societal impact in a low-resource setting like Nigeria. The sun (timer) highlights the importance of convergence speed. Barriers in two of the main river streams symbolize the product space reformulation drawback that Projective Splitting avoids.
Halima Yusuf
mathematics in Nigerian culture
In Northern Nigeria, especially among the Hausa-Fulani, traditional architecture shows strong geometric thinking, seen in the symmetry and tessellation on palace walls and mosques. These designs reflect key mathematical ideas like transformations and recursion. This inspired my passion for abstraction, which I now express through mathematics.