M3 Part 2

“What if you were mini and stuck in a blender?”

Blender Problem

An interesting question that my dad asked me was, “If you were the height of a pen cap and fell to the bottom of a blender, trapped under many cubes of pineapple, with mom about to press the button, what would you do?”

Take a moment to see what you would do. I began with saying that I would probably hang onto the center of the blades, like in the eye of the storm, so that I don’t get launched off. My dad said that I would get dizzy and get knocked off and blended, which I agreed to. My next idea was to lie down and hide under the blades and hope that I don’t get pushed up. My dad responded that it would not be possible because I would get whirled up, and he said that I can’t climb up either; maybe that would be an option for Alex Honnold though.

Finally, I asked, can mom hear me? He said yes. So I told him that I would just shout. Now this was the moral: when you cannot do anything alone, there is no shame in asking for help. I learned this principle at a Normandy summit, but it didn’t really stick, I suppose. I represented fictitious nations and my actions did not have real impacts, so I didn’t remember.

In the blender situation, immediate communication is the only way out, and I hope I remember this for the rest of my life. There are problems that can be done if you are good enough at math, but also those that cannot be solved without other key ingredients.

M3 Reflection

This weekend, my team went to one of our houses (teammate R) for the 14-hour competition.

Time and Preparation

It turns out that 14-hours is a really long time, but also no time at all. In the beginning, there really was no rush and we took ample breaks. By the last five hours, we seemed to be taking breaks less and less frequently because the situation was really sinking in. We would have worked faster with breaks than without.

I slept worse than I expected the previous night due to temperature and my brain was fried by the halfway point but still worked well enough immediately after breaks. I brought my entire setup to my R’s house and almost did not have the right type of electrical outlet to be able to use my computer. Luckily, R’s dad had a converter and I was able to use my computer.

In terms of preparation of modeling strategies, we all read a lot of papers but ended up with a relatively simple model for this year. However, I believe that for the questions given, we made the best model that we could with the time given.

Modeling

It was largely I (meaning myself) and teammate J who actually made the outlines for the two models used. It wasn’t exactly complicated, but that means our explanation just has to be good. It was largely summations, decision trees, probabilities, and scaling. However, because it was I and J who actually made the model while everyone else was writing other sections or researching, the writers did not fully understand the models that were made. This is a major problem with our organization.

Organization

We had two main groups as the organization: one group making the model, the other group writing and finding sources. This comes with the problem of the modeling group not having as much information about the sources as the other group, and the writing group not truly understanding the processes that form the models.

If I were to do it again, I would have everyone doing the one thing, or everyone doing everything. This has its own weaknesses though, because not anyone can do everything, everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes people should stick to different things. In addition, while moving as one unit makes every action solid and complete, a team may not be able to cover as much ground as a split team.

LaTeX

We had one member who could use LaTeX while everyone else did not know how it worked. We felt like LaTeX should be our final product’s format, but it just doesn’t work when everything comes down to the wire with last-minute edits. Basically, do not use it if the entire team does not know how to use it.

Coding

I was the main coder which basically meant I was on modeling duty 90% of the time and could not command the team. I tried having two other coders help me write a bunch of if-towers of code but as it turns out, having many people write code, especially when not having full knowledge of the language and algorithmic ideas, is not too great for organization. The code didn’t seem to have any errors at least, so no one can blame us for that, though the naming of variables was disgustingly inconsistent, and I spent an hour debugging code that just needed a break to be replaced with a continue.

Details

Some of the members on the team got into useless bickerings about tiny details like including graphs or tables, and whether there should be many ellipses after the names of sections in the table of contents. I should have put an end to those immediately, but there were times when I found that the wording of a sentence was crucial. I’ve been paying attention to syntax and diction but my favorite type of phenomenon is when the subject is unclear.

I just saw a YouTube thumbnail on one of Adam Ragusea’s videos with the bolded words, “NO ICE CREAM MACHINE.” Essentially, the video is about a process of making ice cream with only two bowls, so he calls it a process that does not involve an ice cream machine. The issue is that when reading the four word summary, it first makes it seem like there is the lack of ice cream, which is not a good thing, and then that there is a machine. A better wording would be “BOWL ICE CREAM,” with a suggestion in the positive rather than the negative.

Summer Programs

As a junior, it’s a relatively good idea to apply to some summer programs at various universities. The type largely depends on where you want to go to college, the type of field you want to study, and your interests.

For the sciences, research is probably the best option, because showing that you can make some sort of project is very good to show off to others and for yourself. There are some summer programs that are mostly lectures and just taking notes, and while they can be somewhat fun, they don’t offer much in terms of doing stuff.

Cold Emails

If you don’t want to spend the time to write lots of words to justify why you should be allowed to go to a summer program, you can just send cold emails to professors in your area. It’s best if you have done personal projects before, but the entire process is just luck anyway.

Course Selection

Taking too many math courses in the first 3 years of high school seems to be a bad idea, because there is no linear algebra class. It has actually been integrated into differential equations, which is not really a good thing in terms of GPA, but I do like that there is more content covered.

I dislike the graduation requirements for humanities and art, but a good thing is that AP economics counts as a humanity.

So, here are my course selections for 2022-2023:

• AP Computer Science A
• AP Economics
• AP Physics C
• AP Literature
• Animation
• Asia Area Study
• Government

A tip for course selection: if you do not know if you want to take the higher-level course, just sign up and drop if it is too hard after a few weeks.