{"id":45493,"date":"2017-03-30T16:58:14","date_gmt":"2017-03-30T11:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.paisawapas.com\/student-stories\/?p=45493"},"modified":"2017-03-30T16:58:14","modified_gmt":"2017-03-30T11:28:14","slug":"arjun-ramani-who-won-an-award-worth-150000-for-his-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paisawapas.com\/student-stories\/arjun-ramani-who-won-an-award-worth-150000-for-his-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"A Scientist at 18, and winner of a top science award worth $150,000 in the US – Arjun Ramani"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arjun Ramani,<\/strong> an 18-year-old student from Indiana, won the third place honour worth $150,000 for blending the mathematical field of graph theory with computer programming to answer questions about networks\u00a0in the oldest and most prestigious science and math competition in the US<\/strong>.\u00a0Typically, these questions require statistical comparisons to hundreds or thousands of random graphs, a process that can take a relatively long time.\u00a0He developed an algorithm that greatly accelerated the process by reducing the time required to generate these graphs. Arjun’s excellent\u00a0Resume<\/a> speaks all about his works and achievements that led to such a great discovery by this Indian-American teen.<\/p>\n

In conversation with Arjun Ramani :<\/p>\n

Q: Tell us a bit more about yourself.<\/h3>\n

Hi! I am currently a senior (12th grade) at West Lafayette Jr\/Sr High School in West Lafayette Indiana. I am a huge tennis and basketball fan and actually got interested in statistics from watching NBA basketball in the first grade. My favourite pro tennis player is Andy Murrary. Other than research, my main activities are competitive debate, math competitions, and tennis.<\/p>\n

Q: What led you to the idea of making this project? Where did you start from?<\/h3>\n

During my sophomore and junior years, I took several math classes at Purdue University in Multivariate Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Probability<\/strong>. My favourite area of mathematics from a young age has been counting and probability, so I emailed a professor at Purdue asking if they could help find a research project to work on. Professor David Gleich, a computer science professor, agreed to meet me and introduced me to the area of Kronecker Graph generation. I started by reading prior research papers in the field in order to gain an understanding of the area. In addition, I started by implementing simple algorithms that were simplifications of the my larger question. This allowed me to break my larger problem into a series of easier smaller problems.<\/p>\n

\"Arjun<\/p>\n

Q: Brief us about the objective of this project.<\/h3>\n

How is it known if there is a pattern in a set of numbers? The set must be compared to sequence of random numbers. Similarly, in order to find abnormal properties in a graph, it must be compared to a random graph. In mathematics, a graph, or network, represents the connections between various objects. For example, a social network like facebook represents the friendships between people. Current methods for generating random networks are extremely slow. I sought to answer the question: How can random Kronecker graphs be more quickly generated?<\/strong> I worked on a new way to generate Kronecker graphs by \u201chopping\u201d directly from edge to edge by using geometric random variables rather than going through each pair of nodes one by one. In addition, I solved the \u201cunranking\u201d problem, in which each edge is backward-mapped to its nodes allowing for more efficient random network generation. Thus, my algorithm eases the study of networks substantially by more quickly generating stochastic Kronecker graphs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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