Day 2: Mickey Bars and Epcot

Welcome or welcome back to the 2024 Math and the Mouse Blog! We are Hannah and Will. We kicked off our second day in Orlando with a hotel breakfast prior to our very first 8:30 AM lecture.

During our first class session we learned concepts to help us with our first group project. We started with an exercise involving decision making, where we had to figure out an optimal spot to put a fire station in limited borders as an introduction to how decision trees worked. The professors then used that to introduce common problems in data analytics, such as the similarity matching and clustering problems. To solve the similarity matching problem, we group states (data points) together through close proximity. To solve clustering, we group states without any objective, but rather through natural groups. To do this, we need a graph with data points and draw a line to figure out the distance between a base and the data points we have. The base is a point we chose to place on the graph that could be close in proximity or random. We used the distance formula to figure this out. After our lecture, we ventured into the parks to enjoy some afternoon rides.

We entered Epcot while we were virtually queued for the first attraction of the day: Guardians of the Galaxy. Everyone was so excited to ride this brand new coaster and it did not disappoint! The queue was very interactive, the ride was quick but smooth, and there were points where we could feel G forces. When the ride was over it seemed like the whole group wanted to go back 10 more times. After Guardians we had a quick lunch at the Connections Eatery. Following lunch, we had an action-packed day. Rides today included Test Track, Soarin', Living with the Land, Spaceship Earth, The Three Caballeros, and Journey Into Imagination With Figment.

After we finished these rides, we met in the Morocco section of the park to hear about the Mickey Bar project and get familiar with our groups. We also had the opportunity to get a picture with Genie from Aladdin! Then we headed back to the hotel for dinner and started work for our first project. The Mickey Bar project involves finding the “best” place to put an ice cream stand during certain times of the day based on wait times in the Magic Kingdom. We were split into groups of three and given a different section of the park to analyze. We do this by taking bases and turning them into centroids (a data point that moves closer to the center of a certain cluster). In our problem, the clusters are our subsets of rides, and our task is to apply posted wait times (posted every 15 minutes) to our data in order to best figure out where foot traffic may be at a certain time. At the end of the day we got in our groups and brainstormed ways to make this problem work.

Hey, it's Hannah! Although I am from Florida I had never experienced Disney like this before, especially like today at Epcot. Like we stated above, Guardians of the Galaxy was the class favorite and with no doubt it was mine too! Apart from the park, I was introduced to various math concepts and tools such as the Similarity Matching and Clustering Problems, as well as Excel. These proved to be a little tricky to understand at first but eventually I got the hang of it and my group began our project. We discussed how certain grid points of our section won't allow for the Mickey Bar cart to even exist there because these points could be on the attractions themselves or 'swimming' in a body of water. This means that we need to determine which grid points are actually feasible to place a Mickey Bar cart at. As this is just the starting point for our project, my group is ready to take it on!

Howdy everyone! My name is Will and I’m a sophomore health science major here on the trip. Today was a great day for me to get acquainted with some of the math language that will be used throughout the experience. Most of the concepts used in these lectures are new to me, but I’m eager to continue the work we have started today. In between lecture and project time today I enjoyed screaming at the top of my lungs on the Guardians of the Galaxy ride in Epcot, followed by the calming nature of Living with the Land. Epcot is one of my favorite parks so I was very happy to be back. After the park, I learned I would be working with the incredible Ellis Edinkrah and the amazing Virginia St. Clair for our first project. We started working on how to integrate the wait times into our coordinates to find centroids that would be close to where the foot traffic would be, but unfortunately, our first test run got confusing when we tried to integrate times of day. We then tried to run an analysis for one time of day through weighting the wait times with the coordinates of the ride, but our second attempt was also a failed one. Even with our failed attempts, this is just the beginning, and our group is eager to brainstorm more ways to make this work tomorrow!

In conclusion, we really loved the Guardians of the Galaxy and we are very eager to get to work on these Mickey Bar projects! Check back for more tomorrow!

Thanks, Hannah and Will