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Computer Vision: Mapping Poverty in Uganda
By Cathy Zhou, IV Form
Computer Vision: Mapping Poverty in Uganda
This summer, I attended an all-girls program called Ai-4-ALL, formerly known as SAILORS (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory’s Outreach Summer Program). Inspired by the camp’s model “AI will change the world. Who will change AI?” I believe that people, instead of perceiving artificial intelligence (AI) as threats, should use it as a tool for impact. During this camp, I, along with seven other AI-enthusiasts, created a model for mapping poverty using satellite images. (more…)
The Blueprint Hackathon and Finding Your Scientist Doppelgänger
By Luc Coté, Filip Kierzenka, Connor Browder, V Form and Jason Chen, IV Form
The Blueprint Hackathon and Finding Your Scientist Doppelgänger
On February 17th and 18th, the annual Blueprint Hackathon was held at MIT. You may wonder what exactly a Hackathon is, and we certainly wouldn’t blame you. A Hackathon is essentially a “Hacking” Convention, although “Hacking” is used very liberally to make the name sound cooler than “Computer Science” Convention. On the first day, we had the Learnathon, which is devoted entirely to learning about computer science, specifically about App Development, Web Design, or Basics of Coding. Taking the Web Design course, we learned a lot about a style of programming our JAVA based classes have not exposed us to.
The first day was an appetizer of new knowledge. The second day gave the main course: The Buildathon. This is where we put our knowledge to the test, working as a team to create a final project in 9 hours. Our idea was to build a program that matches a user’s face to a famous scientist doppelgänger. (more…)
Unity Based Top-Down Shooter Game: Design and Development
By Gillian Yue, VI Form
Unity based Top-Down Shooter Game: Design and Development
I’ve always been interested in video games since I was a child. To me, playing games was never just entertainment; it was also a special artistic experience. While art can be presented in many forms, visually, auditorily or written down, video games are often a combination of different forms, as they need to contain graphics, sounds, and storylines.
This summer, through the Class of ’68 Grant, I worked on an independent game project for the iOS platform, a simple space-shooter-style game with a small variation: instead of simply shooting “bullets”, the player first collects the bullets by tapping on the randomly code-generated paintballs. I chose to work on this project because I’ve always enjoyed playing Space-Shooting games, and I wondered if I had the ability to create something similar. The bulk of the programming was facilitated by the game engine Unity3d, whereas the graphics and audio used in the game were created respectively in Photoshop and Garageband. So far, I’ve had the time to complete the basic structure and logic of the game, with a few characters, background and soundtracks, and I plan to add more artistic components as my project progresses. (more…)
Fake News & Google: A Vessel in the Sea of Verity and Deceit
By Lulu Eastman, V Form
Fake News & Google: A Vessel in the Sea of Verity and Deceit
In our Digital Age, Google has become a vital tool to the global population, with over a billion people worldwide relying on the search engine as their guide to the human library known as the internet. Google not only nurtures the insatiable curiosity and hunger for knowledge innate to mankind, but also easily provides the masses with unreliable and false information, resulting in an age where anyone can easily be deceived online. (more…)
Math Modeling: Using Math for Flight Path Safety
By Kate Sotir, Cooper Sarafin, Anderson Fan, Shep Green, VI Form and Mo Liu, V Form
Math Modeling: Using Math for Flight Path Safety
Part 1:
The problem at hand is to create a model, a rating system, that would inform potential flyers of the safety of a particular flight. Our solution includes a mathematical equation that gives us a number between 1 and 100, depending on the inputs. Although the values themselves indicate the safety level of flights, we do not want to our audience to read into the numbers: a flight with a safety index of 63 should not be considered a more dangerous flight than a flight with a safety index of 67. Therefore, to make our model directly presentable to our audience, we classified the possible outcomes into ratings. A safety index ranges from 1 to 20 would have a rating of ★, from 20 to 40 would have ★★, 40 to 60 would be ★★★, 60 to 80 ★★★★, and finally, 80 to 100 would have the highest rating of ★★★★★, and flights that fall under this rating would be the safest choice based on our model. (more…)
Competing in the FIRST Robotics Challenge
By Kate Sotir, VI Form
Competing in the FIRST Robotics Challenge
Working in the basement level of the STEM building, using lots of power tools, and occasionally throwing out words like “kickoff,” “drivetrain,” or “STEAMworks,” we are FIRST team 3566, also known as Gone Fishin’.
Gone Fishin’ competes in the FIRST Robotics Competition. FIRST stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.” The robotics competition, open to any high school student, was created in order to promote the STEM fields and offer a competitive yet collaborative atmosphere for robotics. In the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), teams are given a challenge, in the form of a game, and then have six weeks to build a 120 pound, $10,000 robot to meet this challenge. After those six weeks are up, teams compete in various regional events. The ultimate goal is to go to the world championship, held in St. Louis, where around 800 teams gather to play the game. (more…)
Math Modeling: Improved System for Ranking Colleges
By Steven Li & Gabriel Xu, V Form and Finn Reams & Thee Ngamsangrat, VI Form
Math Modeling: Improved System for Ranking Colleges
Summary
Our task was to rank undergraduate colleges based on major elements that were most important to us. To solve the problem at hand, we first came up with six general elements of a college that held significance and found specific variables that would quantify each element. After putting all the variables into a ranking function, we adjusted the weights put on each category in correspondence with the importance we believed they contributed. We applied our model to both normal and extreme cases for testing, and we drew a 3D graph that showed the relationship between the final result with two of the variables as well. (more…)
A Swift Introduction to Programming with Swift
By Colin Capenito, III Form
A Swift Introduction to Programming with Swift
Apple announcing Swift
A few months ago, the Computer Science 1 class began to learn and work with a programming language called “Swift”. Swift is a programming language, used to create apps for iOS and OS X, the operating systems that run devices such as iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Swift is a relatively new language, only announced by Apple around 19 months ago. When it was announced, many were surprised: new programming languages are not created all that often. Developers were desperate to get their hands on Apple’s new language, curious to see what it could and couldn’t do. Since Swift was released, it has grown into a popular language for anyone looking to create apps for the App Store. (more…)
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