{"id":34924,"date":"2024-08-04T16:16:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-04T21:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kwu.edu\/?p=34924"},"modified":"2024-08-01T09:08:06","modified_gmt":"2024-08-01T14:08:06","slug":"feature-kwu-students-win-meritorious-award-in-math-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kwu.edu\/about\/news\/feature-kwu-students-win-meritorious-award-in-math-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Feature: KWU Students Win \u2018Meritorious\u2019 Award in Math Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This story appears in the Spring\/Summer edition of Contact<\/em> magazine.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fritz the golden retriever can\u2019t catch the treats his owner throws at him. The YouTube videos of him being smacked in the face with pizza, donuts, steak, hot dogs and sliders went viral several years ago.<\/p>\n

But why can\u2019t Fritz catch?<\/p>\n

\u201cDog Cannot Catch\u201d was the physics\/engineering problem in a math modeling competition, the SIMIODE Challenge Using Differential Equations Modeling (SCUDEM), an international contest for college undergraduates.<\/p>\n

Three Kansas Wesleyan freshman received a \u201cMeritorious\u201d certificate for their answer. This was the second-best result possible, the competition\u2019s equivalent of a silver medal.<\/p>\n

Data Science majors Barry Neff Jr., Pensacola, Fla., and Matthew Redden, Gypsum, Kan., along with Physics major Elijah Resano, of the Philippines, won the award with their 10-minute video examining the problem. They looked at it from the point of view of the owner, who would profit from continuing to make the videos with his clumsy dog. Other entries tried to help Fritz out.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll three worked very hard, even during weekends and holidays,\u201d said their coach, Dr. Suman Kundu, assistant professor of Mathematics and Physics. \u201cConsidering they are first years, this is a very nice accomplishment indeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

As first-year students, they hadn\u2019t yet had the classes that would teach them how to address the problem, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey never had a programming course,\u201d Kundu said. \u201cThose are skills you learn after coming to college.\u201d<\/p>\n

One skill they had to hone was organization. Besides adjusting to being first-semester students, keeping up with their courses and learning coding on the fly, the three are busy. Neff is on the men\u2019s volleyball team. Redden sings with the Philharmonic Choir and plays saxophone with the Wind Ensemble and The Howl spirit band. He is also on the esports team and captain of the chess club. Resano will be the president of the new STEM Club on campus and is involved with a robotics group off-campus.<\/p>\n

Kundu taught them as much advanced calculus and coding as he could before Oct. 19. That\u2019s when the physics\/engineering SCUDEM problem was revealed and he had to step back.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt explicitly says you cannot have help from any living being,\u201d Neff said, so no more coaching. \u201cThat means we couldn\u2019t have tested it on a dog, even.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kundu had no input \u2014 and none of the fun of working on the problem \u2014 until the team submitted the 10-minute video on Nov. 13.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really hard,\u201d he said about not being able to participate. \u201cBut at the same time, it was a joy to see them pulling ideas, bouncing them off each other, the way you work in real research.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team looked at different angles, velocity, distance from the dog and air resistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had gone through every possibility of doing that with the computer,\u201d Kundu said. \u201cThey wrote the code for it. They did everything for it in less than a month. They really worked hard on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

To continue making the Fritz videos, the owner should throw the food at angles between 30 and 40 degrees for the treat to land just short of the dog, the team demonstrated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had absolute zero knowledge how to use the program they offered to us,\u201d Redden said. \u201cWe had to self-teach.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, they didn\u2019t use it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrying something new was what the judges enjoyed,\u201d Neff said.<\/p>\n

The math was hard and the coding harder, they agreed. But those weren\u2019t the most difficult pieces of the competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest problem was putting what was in our heads on paper so other people could understand it,\u201d Neff said.<\/p>\n

Resano agreed: \u201cIn the competition, there is no wrong answer; it was how you present your answer and defend it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs much as it\u2019s heavy on math, it\u2019s more heavy on how well you can be creative,\u201d Redden added.<\/p>\n

And that was the point, as far as Kundu is concerned.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I say to the boys, the end result is not the main goal,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s the fun you have working with your friends. Teamwork is the most important skill. No research is done single-handedly; you have to have that skill of collaborating with people. You can\u2019t do your science alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a \u201cbig surprise\u201d to learn they had earned a Meritorious certificate. The KWU team was competing with experienced teams from all over the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at past years, we saw a lot of names that came back, competing last year and this year,\u201d Resano said.<\/p>\n

The team credits Kundu and Dr. Kristin Kraemer, chair of the Math and Physics Department with their success.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuman played a big role,\u201d Resano said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe prepared us very well for this competition,\u201d said Neff. \u201cAs much as he denies it, he put a lot of work into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kraemer also helped prepare the team with books and tips while coaching was permitted.<\/p>\n

They are planning to compete again next year and hope to encourage other teams from KWU to compete, too.<\/p>\n

Fritz, also, has learned. Eight years on, he finally catches his treats \u2014 sometimes.<\/p>\n

Story by Jean Kozubowski<\/span><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":34925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFeature: KWU Students Win \u2018Meritorious\u2019 Award in Math Competition - Kansas Wesleyan University<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kwu.edu\/about\/news\/feature-kwu-students-win-meritorious-award-in-math-competition\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Feature: KWU Students Win \u2018Meritorious\u2019 Award in Math Competition - 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