Day 19: A Perfect Day for Points Problems

Remember the Traveling Tourist Problem? Well, it’s back, but we’re looking at a different problem today. For one of our final projects, Connor, The Anh, and Harrison started to ask, what attractions should a person ride in order to have maximum fun at Magic Kingdom? This is something called a knapsack problem. Basically, if you can only put so many things in your knapsack, what are the best things to put in there? In this case, our knapsack is a day at Magic Kingdom! Each attraction was given a score based on its ratings and average wait time, which was used to rank attractions on which would be the most fun. More points means more fun! So, given four hours, what attractions should someone ride to get the highest score? The group who is working on the project needed a way to find out if their solution was the best, so we were broken up into groups of two to three people to try to maximize our points. We started bright and early as we all headed to Magic Kingdom for rope drop. 

Harrison, Connor, and The Anh on The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train

Julia, Mara, and Della at the finish line

Annmarie and Cassie at Cinderella's Castle

Tram and Dylan at Main Street

Luke and Ashton on Tiana's Bayou Adventure (third row)

Aidan and Isabella hanging out with Mickey

Professors on Haunted Mansion

Each group had to decide the best place to start off their four-hour adventure. Some groups, including Dylan and Tram, Luke and Ashton, and Della, Mara, and Julia, rope-dropped Jungle Cruise, while the rest of the cohort headed to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Unfortunately, the ride opening ended up being delayed, prompting Cassie and Annmarie to switch their sights to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. Big Thunder eventually opened back up, but it was not the last problem to plague us during our activity.

Throughout the morning, we all tried our hardest to minimize our wait times and maximize our points. From riding Tron (20 points) to meeting Cinderella (5 points), every group plotted their way across the Magic Kingdom until our ending time of 1pm, with varying degrees of success. For example, Aidan and Isabella lucked out with a five minute wait time for Peter Pan, while Della, Mara and Julia stuck out a 45 minute wait at Big Thunder before being kicked out of line for technical difficulties. Good news, they were able to get Lightning Lanes to ride later!

As an end-of-activity celebration, the professors treated us to lunch at Columbia’s Harbor House - just what a bunch of hot, tired, and sweaty college students needed! The weather was even kind enough to cool us off with a short period of torrential downpour - a perfect ending to a long day at Disney. 

Once we got back from our exhausting trip to Magic Kingdom, everyone took a well-deserved shower (even though we had the rain shower from before lunch), and got to work on our final projects. We also tallied up our points for the morning’s activity - with a total of 70, congratulations goes to Aidan and Isabella!! (The best and coolest group if this author says so herself). 

It was a long day for Dr. Hutson

After a few hours, most of us packed back up to go to EPCOT! It was extra special, since the group thought we’d all ridden Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind for the last time. So, straight to Guardians for this group. We were able to ride it twice, getting in line just before the park officially closed. Between rides, we stopped by Joffrey’s Coffee for “dinner” (or in Ashton’s case, a cold brew after 8pm). Still singing the Guardian’s soundtrack, we all left Epcot for the last time with the professors who kindly waited to drive us home. 

Everybody's favorite ride!

The group rocking out to September on Guardians

Today’s blog was written by Della and Isabella!

Day 18: Safaris, Slushies, Splashes, and Science

Today, we woke up at 9:00 AM and started the day with an overview about how physics is applied in Disney attractions, learned about concepts such as force, motion, and energy transfer, and explored how these principles are used in the design of Disney’s roller coasters. From Dr. Bourzarth, we learned how electromagnets are used in attractions such as Expedition Everest and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. She explained how electromagnetic technology helps control ride vehicles and create a smooth and unique experience.

Animal Kingdom

After class, we had a lot of time to make progress with our project three presentations. Each group spent time brainstorming ideas or using their data to get insights to their projects. This allowed us to make significant progress and prepare for our upcoming presentations.

Group posing while riding Everest

Group collecting empty seat data on Everest

We had plans to leave for Animal Kingdom at 3:00PM for our last visit to this park for our trip. Once we arrived, we were given free time in the park until dinner at 6:00PM at Flame Tree BBQ. Our group went on the Safari first, hoping to see different animals than we had during our first visit, while the other group headed to Everest to start their afternoon. After that, the two groups each got sweet treats in between rides and before dinner. Our group got cookie dough brownie ice cream sandwiches, and the other group got slushies.

Della and Mara getting slushies

We all met up again for dinner, which was super yummy, even the birds agreed! Shout out Luke for sharing your meal with our new flying friends.

Luke sharing his food with a bird

While the other group hurried to try their luck at the Safari, we convinced the professors to go on the Cali River Rapids. While Dr. Harris and Dr. Bouzarth weren’t too hard to convince, getting Dr. Hutson agreed proved to be more difficult than we anticipated. But with much perseverance and a lot of persuading we got him to join us and look at how happy he was!

Group that rides three times

Dr. Hutson thoroughly enjoying the water ride

We decided to ride the River Rapids two more times while the professors and Dylan headed to Everest. Lastly, we all had Lighting Lanes for Avatar Flight of Passage, so we headed there for our last ride of the night.

Dylan and the professors on Everest

Finally, we headed back to the hotel, and the professors introduced us to a fun activity tomorrow, the Knapsack problem. Each group will have four hours in the park to earn as many points as possible by completing certain rides. These points were created by one of the groups because they are using this data for project three. The challenge will help them think strategically about how to maximize scores while working within a limited amount of time.

Today's blog was written by Annmarie Henderson and The Anh Nguyen!

Day 17: The Mathematics of Chance: Card Games, Sampling Distributions, and Cosmic Rewind

 Hi everyone!

We started the day off with some much-needed extra sleep before heading to class. Once in class, we received an introductory statistics crash course accompanied by educational entertainment in the form of mathematical card trick demonstrations by magicians Dr. Hutson and Dr. Harris. 

Dr. Hutson began class with a card trick and an important question: What would it take to confirm that Dylan was secretly psychic? With Dylan as a volunteer, he drew 20 cards from a standard deck and prompted Dylan to guess the suit without looking. Since there are four suits in a deck, there is a 1 out of 4 probability for Dylan to guess the suit correctly, and it would take her over a 25% success rate to be considered psychic. Dylan decided not to reveal her psychic abilities and got less than the probable 25% success rate that was estimated. This was our introduction to sampling distributions.

Next up was Dr. Harris, who took the stage as both the magician and the volunteer. Based on Dylan's results, we expected Dr. Harris to perform in a similar fashion to Dylan, and have a low success rate. At first it appeared to be this way. However, by the end of his 20 guesses he had gotten a lot of them correct, and to make it even more impressive he had even predicted which ones he had guessed correctly! Something seemed suspicious, so he revealed to us that he had actually been looking at the cards before making his guesses. He demonstrated to us that if something seems unlikely, then we must look for statistically discernable evidence to form a conclusion. 

Dr. Bouzarth finished up the class by sparing us from card tricks and wrapping up everything we learned about sampling distributions. 

After wrapping up class, we enjoyed a lunch break and spent a few hours working on our designated projects before heading over to EPCOT to collect data. Today marks the beginning of our final days in the Disney Parks, and we're kicking things off with our official last day at EPCOT. Just like how our first day of the Math and The Mouse program at EPCOT greeted us with rain, our last visit was met with pouring rain. Some of us were smart enough to look at the weather ahead of time and bring ponchos, others were not so lucky and got caught in the rain. Despite the weather we still made the most out of our day at EPCOT.

First at Epcot we first went to go meet Mickey Mouse and his Friends. We were lucky as the wait time to meet them was only 15 minutes! There we were all able to meet and take pictures with Mickey, Goofy, and Minnie!

After that we headed over to Guardians of the Galaxy to collect data on the song distributions, and we all had lighting lanes! This helped to save us from the 85+ minute queue due to some trouble happening with the ride. Though, these troubles still made it hard for some of us to split up into different cars, as there just weren’t enough people! Though some people even got a whole car to themselves.

Afterwards, we then split into two groups. One group decided they wanted to ride all the things that they couldn’t experience yet, such as Journey Into Imagination with Figment, Turtle Talk with Crush, and Frozen Ever after. They stopped and had some delicious food in China where they all were able to read their fortunes. They then went around the rest of the world showcase to go shopping and then watched the spectacular nighttime firework show at the end of the night.

The other group decided to go ride Mission Space, finding nemo, and living with the land. This means that Annmarie, Cassie, Dylan, and Tram rode every ride at EPCOT during this trip. They then ate at Connections Eatery just like we did on the first night. They also really wanted to ride Guardians again, even though the wait time kept on increasing all the way up to 130 minutes! In line they played lots of fun games with Dr. Harris as he wanted to join in on the fun. After the grueling wait they were rewarded with a fun ride listening to September by Earth, Wind & Fire for the last time on this trip.

After the group met up at the EPCOT ball, we had a surprise for Dr. Hutson. We created a personal Figment named after him, which was emailed to him earlier in the day. Though it was sent to his spam folder, he found the surprise very funny. 

We then went back to the hotel to rest up for another day of working on projects tomorrow.

Todays blog was written by Connor Lockett and Julia Torres!

Day 16: The Day We’ve All Been Waiting For!

Welcome back to our blog, and thank you for following along on this journey with us. It's hard to believe that two weeks have already come and gone, and yet, here we are, with one more incredible week still ahead. But before we get ahead of ourselves, we still have a full day to tell you about. Shall we get into how it all began?

 

Hooray!! Today is the day we have all been waiting for. We finally get to show off our work to Disney professionals. Although everyone stayed up pretty late last night, adding our finishing touches to our presentations, we woke up early this morning to run one last practice presentation before heading to a Disney office. We left the hotel with excitement and also nervousness since we were presenting in front of people who have been working for many years in this industry. That being said, we were ready. Behind us were countless hours of research, slide revisions, practice sessions, and, perhaps most importantly, the unwavering support of our professors who believed in us every step of the way. Whatever the outcome, every group showed up that day having given their absolute best. And to us, that was all we needed.

When we got to the office, we were very lucky to see lots of Disney employees. These people were so kind to spend their days with us to teach us more about the company and, of course, listen and ask questions on the projects we’ve been working on for the past two weeks. We were able to hear from people working in various fields such as computer science, operations research, data science, industrial engineering, and even an Imagineer! Although we were nervous to present to such esteemed people, everyone was so kind, and every group did amazing!! The Disney cast members had a lot of great things to say and were impressed with our knowledge and presentation skills. They came ready to ask questions, but lucky for us, we knew this information like the back of our hands, so it was nothing we couldn’t handle. Even though it might have been the first time for some of us presenting in front of experts in this field, we all successfully gave wonderful presentations.

Then, after a full day of learning and presenting in the Disney office, the cast members had a nice game for us. Of course, given the people we are, this turned into a serious competition. We each had 90 seconds to draw a picture of Kermit the Frog from memory. Let’s just say… It’s a good thing we’re math majors instead of art majors. 

After saying goodbye to the Disney hosts, our professors complimented us on our presentation, telling us they were really proud of what we had accomplished. For that moment, it felt like everything had paid off. Just 24 hours ago, we spent time in the lobby of our hotel to make sure our presentation looked good. Now, all the hard work was over for now, and we could celebrate. Our professors took us to Panera Bread for dinner. After a long day at the Disney office, we were all hungry, so it was time for us to recharge our energy before heading to Magic Kingdom. The professors kindly decided that we deserved a night in the park with no data collections or projects, and to just celebrate the hard work we had done. Even though the weather wasn’t its best, we persevered and threw our ponchos on to still have a great time!!

The rain can't stop us from having fun!

During the night, a couple of the members in our cohort had their big break on the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor comedy show. In the middle of the show, the camera panned to Cassie, and she was handed a microphone. She knew what she had to do; she hyped up Furman, our class, and, of course, MATH. We got a round of applause for Furman, and Cassie soaked in her two minutes of fame.

After a couple of hours in the Magic Kingdom, and what felt like the longest day of our lives, we were EXHAUSTED and ready to get to bed!! Rumor has it, they’re letting us sleep in tomorrow :)!!

Mara, Cassie, and Connor are really exhausted!

Today’s blog was written by Dylan Daniels and Tram Le. 

Day 15: Sunset Boulevard Sounds, Presentation Bounds, and Tower of Terror Ups and Downs

    Today marks just one week left of our incredible MatM journey, which is absolutely wild to think about. Leaving is the last thing we want on our minds, so let's get into the highlights of the day!

    It was yet another early morning start for the MatM cohort! Just as we all helped collect data for the Guardians of the Galaxy song distribution group, we collected drop sequence data at the Tower of Terror at Hollywood Studios for the group studying the drop sequences. To collect as many data points as possible, we did our best to separate ourselves onto as many elevators as possible. Every time we were about to enter the main elevator shaft (where the “ups” and “downs” occur), we began recording our voices using the Voice Memos app on our phones. We had to speak into our microphone and clearly say “Up,” “Down,” or “Jiggle” if the car went up, down, or shook, respectively. This data will help the Drop Sequence group determine if there is a pattern or fixed number regarding the drop sequences in the Tower of Terror!

    After successful data collection, we were rewarded with Lightning Lanes to use at the new version of Smuggler’s Run, themed to The Mandalorian and Grogu. This was a nice break from the stress of data collection and gave us a great break to quickly track down the latest most prized bounties.

    At this point, we sadly had to return to the hotel right after finishing up collecting our bountiful profits. Here, each group continued to steadily work on their presentations for Disney; the pressure was certainly on. In order to not hinder work time, the professors picked up food from PITA to help us refuel within the chaos. As presentations began seemingly wrapping up, groups were called one by one for practice presentations to receive as much feedback as possible. The presentations began to feel very real; the fate of Furman’s reputation relied on us. 

     

    After almost all groups were able to receive feedback, we were visited by our fourth guest speakers. They talked to us about their roles within the company, how they came across and eventually started their jobs, and details about various different projects they’ve worked on. As always, it was both insightful and meaningful to hear directly from two of the behind-the-scenes Cast Members, especially since one is a Furman alum!

    Soon after the guest speakers wrapped up their talk, we headed back to Hollywood Studios to eat dinner and collect more Tower of Terror drop sequence data. The group split up into several smaller groups; some went to eat first while others headed down Sunset Boulevard first so that we could gather data points from as many unique elevators as possible. Somehow, against all odds, Dr. Harris used his sweet-talking skills yet again to get our group Lightning Lanes to Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster and Toy Story Mania! How does he keep getting away with this? We’re certainly not going to question his methods. 

    Once we all got done using our Lightning Lanes at about 9:30, we headed back to the hotel to wrap up our Disney presentation preparations. Most groups had extended last-minute discussions with the professors to ensure their presentations were as strong as possible. Then, after some final group discussions, everyone went to bed anticipating the long day ahead. Our entire cohort has worked tirelessly yesterday and today on these presentations, and we are eager to present them to our peers, professors, and Disney professionals. Tomorrow is one of the few days we’ve all had circled on our calendars for months now; we may have had a minimal turnaround time between the Project 2A and 2B presentations and the Disney presentations, but trust us when we say we are all more than ready to knock it out of the park tomorrow!

Today’s blog is brought to you by Aidan Barnard and Ashton Holt!