Models 2 Research Summary
Spring Semester 2016, I was part of an undergraduate Honors Research Group using MATLAB. We researched algorithms to find the shortest walking distance between points on the University of Cincinnati campus. This idea was inspired by the “Shortest Walk on Campus” campaign that student government on campus had been working on. For our research, the data was manually collected by creating an array of nodes, that represent every intersection on the campus roads outside, and then pairs distances between nodes for analysis. For this research, Dijkstra's algorithm was utilized, as it was an algorithm that could be easily converted into code, and it fit the goals of this project. Moving forward, the goals for this research include gathering data and analyzing it to expand the scope of walking to indoor. Once a network of indoor values are obtained, those values can then be used to determine the driest or warmest route for inclement weather, or the route with the least amount of stairs. The ultimate goal of this is to get it into the hands of users by allowing for portability to mobile platforms for development teams in student government. This could eventually help people who are new on campus such as Freshmen or visitors by giving them a way to locate their path more easily. I think this was a great experience for me to take part in. I originally got involved because Models was one of my favorite classes fist semester of freshman year but as we started talking about possible projects I got worried because it was clear that some of the group members had much more programming experience then me and I was worried that I would hold our group back. As the semester went on, however, I was able to contribute a great amount and learn a lot of new information. This process gave me more confidence in my abilities and helped me to learn that I should not be worried about being the smartest person in the room because if you are not the smartest then you have more of an opportunity to learn.
Sample Work
This is a sample of the code that we used during our research. I wrote this function in order to help delete the longest path each time a new point is added to the total path. If the current point is the same as another possible path then the longest path is deleted. This function is called in the code each time there is another point added to the path. I chose this sample because this function was a huge step for me in my learning process because I had never written a function before and this work needed to be done before we learned it in class. This forced me to research how to create functions and when I got stuck I was able to reach out to my teammates who are more knowledgeable about coding for help. Even though some changes were made to this function as we got further in our code, I was still happy that I was able to understand the process because I think all of the things I have learned how to do in MATLAB will help me as I search for a career in the future.