West Ranch High School students Brandon Chang, Kent Gao, and Omkar Guha, coached by Tanja Brosche, participated in a Systemic Initiative for Modeling Investigations and Opportunities with Differential Equations, also known as SIMIODE, challenge in November earning themselves the second highest ranking for their group.
Guha was the one who introduced the competition to his two other teammates. He said he was taking Professor Violeta Kovacev-Nikolic’s differential equation class at College of the Canyons during the spring semester when she brought it up to him and he told Chang and Gao about it.
“We decided that this was a good opportunity and wanted to do it,” said Gao.
This wasn’t the team’s first math competition, however. Gao said the team had previously participated in competitions that focused on agricultural risk and social platforms, so when they examined the problem choices, they wanted to focus on the set that intertwined with social implications.
He said they focused on the problem set about opinion dynamics in social networks.
“We wanted to see how different media campaigns use different kinds of messaging, positive versus negative messaging, and how that affects how well their campaigns come across,” said Gao.
He explained that they solved the problem by creating their own differential equation structure and reviewing others’ research that correlated to theirs.
Once they got their results, Chang said they compared their data and found that their main conclusion was that positive messaging is more effective in the long term. They submitted an eight-minute video presenting their findings and were awarded second place, earning the Meritorious Award.
“People are more likely to recall associations between items on social media when a narrative is created,” said Chang.
Being able to put together all their knowledge and then research to figure out this differential equation is what they enjoyed about this challenge, said Gao. He said it was also good practice for the real world.
“Internships are hard to come by and this was a way for us to use applications of differential equations without having to go search for jobs or companies to work for,” Gao said.
Chang followed that by saying that the group felt the topic they chose was a relevant and timely example. He said with the COVID-19 pandemic, people already saw how certain types of messaging can affect perceptions depending on how people received it.
He said crucial societal issues, like vaccines, where it is needed for people to understand and receive the message that vaccines do reduce the spread of illness, it is important and necessary for mathematicians to share their findings and apply their conclusions to have real-world impacts.
“I’m pretty happy because I believe we are the first ones in our school to do this,” said Guha. “It was a very interesting problem.”
Chang added that it was interesting to see how other teams from around the world conducted their projects.
